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THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 




Copyright, 1901, by J. C. HemnietU 

Emperor's Throne in the Forbidden City 



The 

Last Days of Pekin 

Translated from the French of 
Pierre Loti 

By 
MYRTA L. JONES 



Illustrated from Photographs^ and Drawings 
by 'Jessie B, Jones 



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Boston 

Little, Brown, and Company 

1902 



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Copyright, igo2. 
By Little, Brown, and Company. 

All rights reserved 
Published November, 1902 



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•»• ••• 



UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 



DEDICATION 

TO 

VICE-ADMIRAL POTTIER 

Commander-in-Chief of the Squadron of the Far East 

Admiral : — 

The notes which I sent to the "Figaro" from China are 
to be collected in a volume which will be published in Paris 
before my return, so that it will be impossible for me to look 
it over. I am therefore a little uneasy as to how such a col- 
lection may turn out ; it will doubtless contain much repetition. 
Yet I beg that you will accept this dedication as a token of the 
profound and affectionate respect of your first aide-de-camp. 
You will be more indulgent than any one else, because you 
know under what conditions it was written, — from day to day 
during a painful campaign in the midst of the continual excite- 
ment of life aboard ship. 

I have restricted myself to noting the things which have 
come under my own observation while undertaking the missions 
to which you assigned me, and in the course of the journey 
which you allowed me to take into a certain part of China 
hitherto almost unknown. 

When we reached the Yellow Sea, Pekin had been taken, 
and the war was over. I could, therefore, only observe our 
soldiers during the period of peaceful occupation. Under 
these circumstances I have seen them always kind and almost 
fraternal in manner toward the humblest of the Chinese. May 
my book contribute its small part toward destroying the 
shameful stories published against them 1 



vi DEDICATION 

Perhaps you may reproach me, Admiral, for saying almost 
nothins: of the sailors who remained on our ships, who were 
constantly toiling with never a murmur or a loss of courage 
during our long and dangerous sojourn in the waters of 
Petchili. Poor sequestered beings living between steel walls ! 
They did not have, to sustain them, as their superiors had, 
any of the responsibilities which make up the interest of life, 
or the stimulus that comes from having to decide serious ques- 
tions. They knew nothing, they saw nothing, not even the 
sinister coast in the distance. In spite of the heat of a 
Chinese summer, fires were burning day and night in their 
stifling quarters ; they lived bathed in a moist heat, dripping 
with perspiration, coming out only for exhausting drill-work 
in small boats, in bad weather, and often in the dead of night 
and on boisterous seas. 

One needs but a glance at their thin pale faces now, to 
understand how difficult their obscure role has been. 

But if I had told of the monotony of their hardships, and 
of their silent unending devotion, no one would have had the 
patience to read me. 

PIERRE LOTI. 






TRANSLATOR'S NOTE 

THE account of his experiences in China, 
published by Pierre Loti under the title 
of " Les Derniers Jours de Pekin," first 
appeared in the form of letters written to the 
" Figaro " from China, from notes taken on the spot 
during those memorable days when he was serving 
on board one of the French warships. 

Loti has written little of late, having had no end of 
trouble with his naval superiors, through jealousy, 
it is said, of his literary success. 

As Julian Viaud, Loti ranks in the navy as 
" Lieutenant de vaisseau." Some time ago he was 
abruptly retired. He took his case before the 
" Conseil d'etat," which finally gave a verdict in his 
favor, and he secured the nomination of officier 
d'ordonnance at the time of the Chinese difficulties, 
during which he resumed his literary work neglected 
in a measure on account of the tribulations con- 
nected with his naval career. 



vrn TRANSLATOR'S NOTE 

His account of his experiences in China is very- 
personal and very national, yet, exotic that it is, it 
presents such a vivid picture of certain phases of 
China that it is of value as the contribution of 
an observer possessing sympathy, imagination, and 
knowledge, as well as the literary sense, to the his- 
tory of our own times. 

MYRTA L. JONES. 



CONTENTS 

Page 

I. Arrival in the Yellow Sea i 

II. At Ning-Hia 9 

III. On the Way to Pekin 18 

IV. In the Imperial City 81 

V. Return to Ning-Hia 196 

VI. Pekin in Springtime 202 

VII. The Tombs of the Emperors . . . . 226 

VIII. The Last Days of Pekin 274 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Emperor's Throne in the Forbidden City Frontispiece 

French Cavalry Orderly with Despatches . Facing Page 1 1 
Transports on the Pei-Ho " 21 

The Great Wall surrounding the Outer City 

of Pekin " 57 

Chen-Mun Gate to Pekin " 73 

The Temple of Heaven ....... " 79 

Marble Bridge over Moat before Southern 

Gate of the Forbidden City .... " 85 

The Big Tower or Wall Entrance of Tartar 

City « 103 

The Executive Palace of the Emperor in 

the Forbidden City " 145 

An Imperial Palace " 167 

Priceless Porcelains and Bronzes in the 

Third Palace, Forbidden City ... " 181 

The Mouth of the Pei-Ho *' 202 

Chinese Village Carts, the only Vehicle used 

in the North of China « 230 



^ 



Xll 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Non-commissioned Officers and Men of 

French Artillery and Marines . . Facing Page 2 ^^ 

Chinese Peasants cultivating Rice Fields 

with Native Plow " 246 

The Lake and Southern View of Summer 

Palace " 275 



The Last Days of Pekin 



THE ARRIVAL IN THE YELLOW SEA 

Monday, Sept. 24, 1900. 

VERY early morning, on a calm sea and 
under a starry sky. A light on the eastern 
horizon shows that day is about to break, 
yet it is still night. The air is soft and moist. — 
Is it the summer of the North, or the winter of a 
warm climate? Nothing in sight on any side, no 
land, no light, no sail, no indication of any place 
— just a marine solitude in ideal weather and in 
the mystery of the wavering dawn. 

Like a leviathan which conceals itself in order 
to surprise, the big iron-clad advances silently with 
determined slowness, its engines barely revolving. 
It has just covered five thousand miles almost 
without pausing to breathe, constantly making 
forty-eight turns of the screw to a minute, ac- 
complishing without stopping and without dam- 
age of any sort, and without much wear and 
tear of its substantial machinery, the longest jour- 
ney, at the highest rate of sustained speed, that a 
monster of its size has ever undertaken, thus de- 



2 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

feating in this important test ships reputed to be 
faster, and which at first sight might be thought 
superior in speed. 

This morning it has arrived at the end of its 
journey, it is about to reach a part of the world 
whose name but yesterday was unknown, but 
toward which the eyes of Europe are now turn- 
ing. This sea, where the morning light is calmly 
breaking, is the Yellow Sea, it is the gulf of Pet- 
chili, from which one reaches Pekin. An im- 
mense fighting squadron must already be assembled 
very near us, although as yet nothing indicates 
its vicinity. 

We have been two or three days crossing this 
Yellow Sea in beautiful September weather. Yes- 
terday and the day before, junks with sails of mat- 
ting have crossed our route, on their way to Corea ; 
shores and islands more or less distant have ap- 
peared, but at the present moment the entire circle 
of the horizon is empty. 

Since midnight we have been moving slowly, 
in order that our expected arrival in the midst of 
this fleet of ships — which is to be attended with 
obligatory military pomp — should not take place 
at too early an hour. 

Five o'clock. Out of the semi-obscurity sounds 
the music of the reveille, the gay trumpeting, 



ARRIVAL IN YELLOW SEA 3 

which each morning arouses the sailors. It is 
earher than usual, so that there may be ample 
time to perform the toilet of the iron-clad, which 
has lost some of its freshness during forty-five 
days at sea. We still see nothing but empty space, 
and yet the lookout, from his post aloft, reports 
black smoke on the horizon. This small cloud of 
coal smoke, which from below looks like nothing, 
betokens a formidable presence; it is produced by 
great steel ships, it is the breath of this unprece- 
dented squadron which we are about to join. 

Before the ship's toilet comes that of the crew. 
Barefooted and bare-chested, the sailors splash in 
the water in the dawning light. In spite of con- 
tinual hard work, they are no more tired than the 
ship that carries them. The Redoutable is, of all 
the ships that departed so suddenly, the only one 
which has had neither death nor sickness on board, 
even in crossing the Red Sea. 

Now the sun has risen clear above the horizon, 
a yellow disk which slowly climbs upward from 
behind the quiet waters. For us, who have just 
left equatorial regions, this rising, luminous as it 
is, has I know not what of melancholy and of dul- 
ness, which savors of autumn and a northern cli- 
mate. Really in two or three days the sun has 
changed. Now it no longer burns, it is no longer 
dangerous, we cease to fear it. 



4 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

In front of us, from out the cloud of coal 
smoke, far-off objects begin to emerge, perceptible 
only to the eye of the mariner ; a forest of spears, 
one should say, planted away off at the end of 
space, almost beyond the range of vision. We 
know what they are, — the giant chimneys, the 
heavy fighting masts, the terrible paraphernalia of 
warfare, which, with the smoke, reveal from afar 
the modern squadron. When our morning clean- 
ing is over, when everything has been washed with 
buckets of sea water, the Redoutahle increases her 
speed to the average of eleven and a half knots an 
hour, which she has maintained since her departure 
from France. And while the sailors are busy mak- 
ing the brass and copper shine, she begins again to 
trace her deep furrow through the tranquil waters. 

Objects on the smoky horizon line begin to 
stand forth and take shape. Below the innumer- 
able masts, masses of every form and color are 
distinguishable. These are the ships themselves. 
Between the calm water and the pale sky lies the 
whole terrible company, an assemblage of strange 
monsters, some white and yellow, others white 
and black, others the color of slime or of fog, in 
order to make them less easily distinguishable. 
Their backs are humped and their sides half sub- 
merged and hidden like big uneasy turtles. Their 
structures vary according to the conceptions of 



ARRIVAL IN YELLOW SEA 5 

different persons in regard to engines of destruc- 
tion, but all alike breathe forth horrible coal smoke, 
which dulls the morning light. 

No more of the coast of China is visible than if 
we were a thousand leagues away or than if it did 
not exist. Yet we are close to Taku, the meeting- 
place toward which for so many days our minds 
have been bent. It is China, close by although in- 
visible, which attracts by its nearness this herd of 
beasts of prey, and which keeps them as immov- 
able as fallow deer at bay, at this precise point on 
the seas, until some one speaks the word. 

The water, here where it is less deep, has lost 
its beautiful blue, to which we have so long been 
accustomed, and has become troubled and yellow, 
and the sky, although cloudless, is decidedly mel- 
ancholy. Our first impression of this whole scene, 
of which we shall undoubtedly for a long time 
form a part, is one of sadness. 

But now as we draw nearer and the sun rises 
there is a change, and the beautiful shining iron- 
clads with their many-colored flags begin to stand 
out. It is indeed a remarkable squadron that 
here represents Europe, — Europe armed against 
gloomy old China. It occupies an infinite amount 
of space, the whole horizon seems crowded with 
ships, and small boats — little steam tugs — hurry 
like busy people among the big motionless vessels. 



6 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

Now cannon on all sides begin a military wel- 
come for our admiral, beneath the heavy curtain 
of black smoke; the gay light smoke from powder 
blossoms like sheaves and goes off in white masses, 
while up and down the iron masts the tricolor 
rises and falls in our honor. Everywhere trum- 
pets sound, foreign bands play our Marseillaise, 
— one is more or less intoxicated with this cere- 
monial, always the same yet always superb, which 
here borrows an unaccustomed magnificence on 
account of the display of the fleet. 

And now the sun is at last awake and shining, 
adding to the day of our arrival a last illusion of 
midsummer heat, in this country of extreme sea- 
sons; in two months' time it will begin to freeze 
up for a long winter. 

When evening comes, our eyes, which will 
weary of it soon enough, are feasted upon a 
grand fairy-like spectacle, given for us by the 
squadron. Suddenly electric lights appear on all 
sides, white, or green, or red, twinkling and spark- 
ling in a dazzling manner ; the big ships, by means 
of a play of lights, converse with one another, and 
the water reflects thousands of signals, thousands 
of lights, while the rockets race for the horizon or 
pass through the sky like delirious comets. One 
forgets all that breeds death and destruction in 



ARRIVAL IN YELLOW SEA 7 

this phantasmagoria, and for the moment feels 
oneself in the midst of a great city, with towers, 
minarets, palaces, improvised in this part of the 
world especially for this extravagant nocturnal 
celebration. 

September 25. 

It is only the next day and yet everything is 
different. A breeze came up in the morning, — 
hardly a breeze, just enough to spread over the 
sea big vague plumes of smoke. Already furrows 
are being made in this open and not very deep 
roadstead, and the small boats, continually going 
and coming, bob up and down bathed in spray. 

A ship with the German colors appears upon 
the horizon just as we appeared yesterday; it is 
immediately recognized as the Herta, bringing 
Field-Marshal von Waldersee, the last one of the 
military commanders expected at this meeting- 
place of the Allies. The salutes that yesterday 
were for us, begin anew for him, the whole mag- 
nificent ceremony is repeated. Again the cannon 
give forth clouds of smoke, mingling tufts of white 
with the denser variety, and the national air of 
Germany is taken up by all the bands, and borne 
on the rising wind. 

The wind whistles stronger, stronger and colder ; 
a bad autumn wind, that plays about the whalers 



8 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

and the tugs, which yesterday circulated readily 
among the various groups of the squadron. 

It presages difficult days for us, for in this un- 
certain harbor, which in an hour's time becomes 
dangerous, we shall have to land thousands of 
soldiers sent from France and thousands of tons 
of war supplies. Many people and many things 
must be moved over this rough water, in barges 
or in small boats, in the cold and even in the 
night, and must be taken to Taku across the river's 
changing bar. 

To organize this long and perilous undertaking 
is to be our task — that of the marines — during 
the first few months, an austere, exhausting, and 
obscure role without apparent glory. 



II 

AT NING-HIA 

Oct. 3, 1900. 

IN the gulf of Petchili on the beach at Ning- 
Hia, Hghted by the rising sun. Here are 
sloops, tugs, whalers, junks, their prows in 
the sand, landing soldiers and war supplies at the 
foot of an immense fort whose guns are silent. On 
this shore there is a confusion and a babel such 
as has been seen in no other epoch of history. 
From these boats where so many people are 
disembarking, float pell-mell all the flags of 
Europe. 

The shore is wooded with birches and willows, 
and in the distance mountains with strange out- 
lines raise their peaks to the clear sky. There are 
only northern trees, showing that the winters in 
this country are cold, and yet the morning sun is 
already burning ; the far-off peaks are magnificently 
violet, the sun shines as in Provence. Standing 
about among the sacks of earth collected for the 
erection of hasty defences, are all kinds of people. 
There are Cossacks, Austrians, Germans, English 



lo THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

midshipmen, alongside of our armed sailors ; little 
Japanese soldiers, with a surprisingly good mili- 
tary bearing in their new European uniforms ; fair 
ladies of the Russian Red-Cross Society, busy 
unpacking material for the ambulances; and Ber- 
saglieri from Naples, who have put their cock- 
feathers onto colonial caps. 

There is something about these mountains in 
this sunshine, in this limpid air, that recalls the 
shores of the Mediterranean on autumn mornings. 
Not far away an old gray structure rises among the 
trees, twisted, crooked, bristling with dragons and 
monsters. It is a pagoda. The interminable line 
of ramparts which winds about and finally loses 
itself behind the summits of the mountains in the 
distance, is the Great Wall of China, which forms 
the boundary of Manchuria. 

The soldiers who disembark barefooted in the 
sand, gaily calling out to one another in all tongues, 
seem to be the sort who are easily amused. What 
they are doing to-day is called " a peaceful cap- 
ture," and it seems more like a celebration of uni- 
versal fusion, of universal peace, yet not far from 
here, in the vicinity of Tien-Tsin and of Pekin, 
the country is in ruins and is strewn with the 
dead. 

The necessity for occupying Ning-Hia, of hold- 
ing it as a base of supplies, had been impressed 




Copyrigiit, 1 901, by J. C. Hemvietit 

French Cavalry Orderly with Despatches 



AT NING-HIA ii 

upon the admirals of the international squadron, 
and day before yesterday all the ships had pre- 
pared for a struggle, knowing that the forts on the 
shore were well armed ; but the Chinese who lived 
here, warned by an official that a formidable com- 
pany of cuirassiers would appear at daybreak, pre- 
ferred to leave the place — so we found it deserted 
on our arrival. 

The fort which overlooks the shore and which 
forms the terminus of the Great Wall at its sea 
end, has been declared international. 

The flags of the seven allied nations float there 
together, arranged in alphabetical order at the 
end of long poles guarded by pickets, — Austria, 
France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, 
Russia. 

The other forts scattered over the surrounding 
heights have been apportioned, the one belonging to 
France being situated about a mile from the shore. 
It is reached by a dusty road, bordered with birches 
and frail willows, which crosses gardens and 
orchards turning brown at the same season as 
our own, — gardens exactly like ours, with mod- 
est rows of cabbages and pumpkins and long lines 
of lettuce. The little wooden houses too, scat- 
tered here and there among the trees, resemble 
those of our villages, with red tiled roofs, vines 
trained in garlands, and little beds of zinnias. 



12 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

asters, and chrysanthemums. It is a country 
which should be peaceful, happy, yet which has in 
two days' time become depopulated through fear 
of the approach of the invaders from Europe. 

On this fresh October morning the sailors and 
soldiers of all nations are hurrying and skurrying 
along the shaded road that leads to the French 
fort, seeking the pleasures of discovery; amusing 
themselves in a conquered land, catching chickens 
and pilfering salads and pears from the gardens. 
The Russians are taking down the Buddhas and 
gilded vases from a pagoda. The English are 
driving with sticks the cattle captured in the fields. 
The Dalmatians and the Japanese — fast friends 
of an hour's standings are making their toilet 
together on the banks of a stream, and two Bersa- 
glieri who have caught a little donkey are riding 
it astride, almost bursting with laughter. 

And yet the sad exodus of Chinese peasants 
which began yesterday still continues; in spite of 
the assurance given them that no harm would be 
done to any one, those who were left felt them- 
selves too near and preferred to flee. Whole fam- 
ilies departed with bowed heads; men, women, 
children, all dressed alike in blue cotton gowns, 
and loaded with baggage, even the babies resign- 
edly carrying their little pillows and mattresses. 

One scene was heart-breaking. An old Chinese 



AT NING-HIA 13 

woman — very, very old, perhaps a hundred years 
old — who could scarcely stand up, was going, 
God knows where, driven from her home, where 
a company of Germans had established themselves ; 
she went away, dragging herself along with the 
help of two young lads who may have been her 
grandsons and who supported her as best they 
could, looking at her with infinite respect and ten- 
derness. Seeming not to see us and looking as 
though she had nothing further to expect from 
any one, she passed slowly by, her poor face filled 
with despair, with supreme and irremediable dis- 
tress, whilst the soldiers behind her were throwing 
away with shouts of laughter the unpretentious 
images from the altar of her ancestors. The 
beautiful sunshine of the autumn morning shone 
calmly on her well-cared-for little garden, bloom- 
ing with zinnias and asters. 

The fort which fell to the lot of the French 
occupies almost the space of a town with all its 
dependencies, lodgings for mandarins and soldiers, 
electrical work-shops, stables, and powder maga- 
zines. In spite of the dragons that adorn the 
gates and in spite of the clawed monster painted 
on a stone slab in front of the entrance, it is con- 
structed upon the most recent principles — plas- 
tered, casemated, and provided with Krupp guns of 
the latest models. Unfortunately for the Chinese, 



14 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

who had accumulated in the vicinity of Ning-Hia 
some terrifying defences, — mines, torpedoes, fou- 
gades, and intrenched camps, — nothing was fin- 
ished, nothing completed anywhere ; the movement 
against foreigners began six months too soon, 
before they had gotten into working order all the 
material Europe had sold to Li-Hung-Chang. 

A thousand Zouaves who are to arrive to-mor- 
row are to occupy this fort during the winter; 
while awaiting their arrival we have simply 
brought along a score of sailors to take 
possession. 

It is curious to go among these houses, aban- 
doned in haste and terror, and to find ourselves in 
the midst of the disorder of precipitate flight; 
broken furniture and dishes, clothing, guns, bay- 
onets, ballistic books, boots with paper soles, um- 
brellas, and ambulance supplies are piled pell-mell 
before the doors. In the kitchens dishes of rice 
are ready for the oven, with plates of cabbage and 
cakes made of fried grasshoppers. 

There are shells everywhere, cartridges strew 
the grounds, gun-cotton is dangerously dispersed, 
and black powder is scattered in long trains. But 
side by side with this debauch of war materials, 
droll details attest the human side of Chinese life; 
on all the window-sills are pots of flowers, on all 
the walls are household gods placed there by the 



AT NING-HIA 



15 



soldiers. The familiar sparrow abounds here, and 
is never interfered with, it seems, by the inhab- 
itants of the place, and from the roofs the cats, 
circumspect but anxious to enter into relations 
with us, are observing the sort of menage that 
will be possible with such unexpected hosts as 
ourselves. 

Very near us, a hundred metres from our fort, 
passes the Great Wall of China. It is surmounted 
at this point by a watch tower, where the Japanese 
are now established, and there they have planted 
their white flag on a bamboo stick in the red 
sunlight. 

Always smiling, especially at the French, the 
little Japanese soldiers invite us to come up to see 
from above the surrounding country. 

The Great Wall, seven or eight hundred metres 
thick at this point, descends gently amid green 
grass on the Chinese side, but drops vertically on 
the side toward Manchuria, where it is flanked 
by enormous square bastions. 

We mount, and at our feet we see the wall 
plunging on one hand into the Yellow Sea, while 
on the other it rises to the summits of the moun- 
tain and goes winding on through the fields as 
far as the eye can see, giving the impression 
of a colossal thing which never comes to any 
end. 



1 6 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

Toward the east we have a view, in this clear 
light, of the deserted plains of Manchuria. 

Toward the west — in China — the wooded 
country has a deceptive look of peace and confi- 
dence. All the European flags hoisted on the forts 
have a festive air amid all the green. It is true 
that on a plain near the shore there are evidences 
of an immense movement of Cossacks, but they are 
far away and the noise does not reach us, though 
there are at least five thousand men among the 
tents and among the flags which are stuck into the 
ground. Where the other powers send to Ning- 
Hia only a few companies, the Russians on the 
contrary proceed in great masses, because of their 
designs on neighboring Manchuria. Shan-Hai- 
Kouan, the Tartar village which has closed its 
gates through fear of pillage, appears in the dis- 
tance, gray and mute as though asleep behind its 
high crenellated walls. On the sea ofT toward the 
horizon, rests the squadron of the Allies, — a fleet 
of steel monsters with black smoke, friends for the 
moment, silently assembled in the motionless blue. 

The weather is calm, exquisite, buoyant. The 
prodigious rampart of China blossoms at this 
season like a garden. Between its sombre bricks, 
loosened by time, asters, and quantities of pinks 
like those at the seashore in France are pushing 
their way through. 



AT NING-HIA 



17 



This legendary wall, which has for centuries 
stopped all invasion from the north, will probably 
nevermore see the yellow flag and the green dragon 
of the Celestial emperors. Its time has gone by, 
passed, is forever at an end. 



Ill 

ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 

I 

Thursday, Oct. ii, 1900. 

AT noon, on a beautiful calm day that is 
almost warm and very luminous on the 
water, I leave the admiral's ship, the Re- 
doutahle, to go on a mission to Pekin. 

We are in the gulf of Petchili on the road to 
Taku, but at such a distance from the shore that 
it is not visible, so there is no indication of China 
anywhere. 

The trip begins with a short ride on a steam 
launch, which takes us out to the Bengali, the 
little despatch-boat which will bring me to land 
by to-night. 

The water is softly blue in the autumn sunshine, 
which is always bright in this part of the world. 
To-day, by chance, the wind and the waves seem 
to sleep. As far as one can see, great war-ships 
succeed one another, motionless and menacing. 
As far as the horizon there are the turrets, the 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 19 

masts, the smoke of the astonishing international 
squadron with all its train of satellites, torpedo 
boats, transports, and a legion of packet-boats. 

The Bengali, upon which I am about to embark 
for a day, is one of the little French ships carrying 
troops and war supplies, which for a month past 
has been painfully and wearisomely going and 
coming between the transports or freighters arriv- 
ing from France, and the port of Taku beyond the 
Pei-Ho bar. 

To-day it is full of Zouaves, — brave Zouaves 
who arrived yesterday from Tunis, careless and 
happy, bound for this ominous Chinese land. 
They are crowded on the bridge, packed to- 
gether, their faces gay and their eyes wide open 
for a glimpse of China, which has filled their 
thoughts for weeks and which is now near at 
hand, just over the horizon. 

According to ceremonial custom, the Bengali, 
when it appears, must pass the stern of the Re- 
doiitahle to salute the admiral. The music waits 
behind the armor, ready to play one of those 
marches so intoxicating to the sailor. And when 
we come up close to the big ship, almost under 
its shadow, all the Zouaves — those destined to 
return as well as those who must perish — wave 
their red caps to the sound of the bugle, with hur- 
rahs for the ship, which here represents France 



20 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

to their eyes, and for the admiral, who from the 
bridge raises his cap in their honor. 

At the end of half an hour China appears. 

Never has an uglier and more forbidding shore 
surprised and congealed poor newly arrived sol- 
diers. A low shore, a gray barren land without 
tree or grass. Everywhere there are forts of 
colossal size of the same gray as the earth, masses 
of geometrical outline pierced by embrasures for 
guns. Never has the approach to a country pre- 
sented a more extensive or aggressive military 
array; on both sides of the horrible stream with 
its muddy waters loom similar forts, giving the 
impression of a place both terrible and impreg- 
nable, giving the impression also that this harbor, 
in spite of its wretched surroundings, is of the first 
order of importance, is the key to a great country, 
and gives access to a city large, rich, and powerful 
— as Pekin must have been. From a nearer view 
the walls of the first two forts, stained, full of 
holes, and ravaged by cannon-balls, bear witness 
to furious and recent battles. 

We know how, on the day Taku was taken, 
they exhausted their strength on one another. By 
a miracle, a French shell from the Lion fell right 
into one of them, causing the explosion of its 
enormous powder magazine so that the yellow 
gunners lost their heads. The Japanese then 




Transports on the Pei-Ho 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 21 

seized this fort and opened an unexpected fire on 
the one opposite, and immediately the overthrow 
of the Chinese began. Had it not been for this 
chance, for this shell, and for this panic, all the 
European gunners anchored in the Pei-Ho would 
inevitably have been lost ; the landing of the Allies 
would have been impossible or problematical, and 
the whole face of the war changed. 

We now move up the river through the muddy 
infected water where impurities of all sorts are 
floating, as well as the bodies of men and animals. 
On both of the sombre shores we see by the light 
of the declining sun a procession of ruins, a uni- 
form black and gray desolation of earth, ashes, and 
calcined slopes, tumbled walls, and ruins. 

On this pestilential river a feverish animation 
reigns, so that it is difficult for us to make our 
way through the obstructions. Junks by the hun- 
dreds, each flying the colors and having at the 
stern the name of the nation by whom it is em- 
ployed — France, Italy, United States, etc. — in 
big letters above the devilry of the Chinese in- 
scription, besides a numberless flotilla of towing 
vessels, lighters, colliers, and packets. 

On the terrible, steep, muddy banks, amongst 
filth and dead animals, there is an ant-like activity. 
Soldiers of all the armies of Europe mingle with 
coolies driven with sticks, unpacking military 



22 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

stores, tents, gims, wagons, mules, horses. Such 
a confusion as never was of uniforms, rubbish, 
cannons, debris, and provisions of all kinds. An 
icy wind which rises toward evening makes us 
shiver after the hot sun of the day and brings 
with it the gloom of winter. 

Before the ruins of a quarter where the flag 
of France is floating, the Bengali approaches the 
lugubrious shore, and our Zouaves disembark 
rather discountenanced by the sombre reception 
given them by China. While waiting for some 
sort of a shelter to be provided, they light fires 
on the shore which the wind fans into flame, and 
there they heat their evening meal in darkness and 
silence and in the midst of clouds of infected dust. 

On the deserted plain from which the dust, the 
cold, and the squalls come, the black devastated 
town, overrun with soldiers, extends, breathing 
pestilence and death. 

A small street through its centre, hastily rebuilt 
in a few days' time with mud, broken timbers, and 
iron, is lined with dubious-looking taverns. Men 
from I don't know where, mongrels of every race, 
sell absinthe, salt-fish, and deadly liquors to the 
soldiers. There is some drunkenness, and occa- 
sionally knives are drawn. 

Outside of this improvised quarter Taku no 
longer exists. Nothing but ruined walls, burned 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 23 

roofs, piles of ashes, and nameless receptacles of 
filth, wherein are huddled together old clothing, 
dogs, and human heads covered with hair. 

I slept on board the Bengali, this hospitality 
having been extended to me by the commander. 
Occasional shots break the nocturnal silence, and 
toward morning I hear — although half asleep — 
horrible cries uttered by the Chinese on shore. 

Friday, October 12. 

I rose at daybreak to go and take the train, 
which still runs as far as Tien-Tsin and even a 
little beyond. Farther on, the road having been 
destroyed by Boxers, I shall continue I do not 
yet know how, either in a Chinese cart, in a junk, 
or on horseback, and from all accounts cannot 
count on seeing the great walls of Pekin for six 
or seven days. I have an order which will secure 
me rations from the posts along the road, other- 
wise I should run the risk of dying from hunger 
in this ravaged land. I have as little baggage as 
possible, nothing but a light canteen, and but one 
travelling companion, a faithful servant brought 
from France. 

At the station, where I arrive at sunrise, I find 
again all yesterday's Zouaves, their knapsacks on 
their backs. No tickets are necessary for this 



24 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

railway, everything military is carried by right of 
conquest. Along with Cossack and Japanese sol- 
diers a thousand Zouaves pile into carriages with 
broken panes through which the wind whistles. I 
find a place with their officers, and very soon we 
are calling up memories of Africa, where they 
have been, and longing for Tunis and Algeria the 
White. 

We are two hours and a half on the road 
across the mournful plain. At first it was only 
gray earth as at Taku ; then there were reeds and 
herbage touched with frost. On all sides are im- 
mense splashes of red, like blood stains, due to 
the autumn flowering of a kind of marsh plant. 
On the horizon of this desert myriads of migra- 
tory birds may be seen, rising like clouds, eddy- 
ing and then falling. The north wind blows and 
it is very cold. 

Soon the plain is peopled with tombs, — tombs 
without number, all of the same shape, — each 
one a kind of cone of earth piled up and sur- 
mounted by a ball of faience, — some small, like 
little huts, others as large as camping tents. They 
are grouped according to families and they are 
legion. The entire country is a burial-place with 
a gory look resulting from the splashes of red to 
which I have referred. 

At the stopping-places where the ruined stations 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 25 

are occupied by Cossacks, there are calcined cars 
— damaged by fire — and locomotives riddled with 
balls. At other places we do not stop because 
there is nothing left ; the few villages which mark 
this vicinity are all destroyed. 

Tien-Tsin! It is ten o'clock in the morning. 
Pierced by the cold, we step down amid the clouds 
of dust which the north wind perpetually scatters 
over this dried-up country. We are taken in hand 
by Chinese scouts, who, without even knowing 
where we want to go, trot off, at full speed, with 
us in their little carriages. The European streets 
along which they are running (here called " con- 
cessions "), seen through a cloud of blinding dust, 
have the look of a big city, but the almost luxuri- 
ous houses are riddled with shells, literally ripped 
open and without roofs or windows. The shores 
of the rivers, here as at Taku, are like a fevered 
babel; thousands of junks lie there, unloading 
troops, horses, guns. In the streets where Chinese 
workmen are carrying enormous loads of war 
supplies, one meets soldiers of all the nations of 
Europe, officers in every sort of uniform, on horse- 
back, in chairs, or on foot. And there is of course 
a perpetual interchange of military salutes. 

Where are we to lay our heads? Really, we 
have no idea, in spite of our desire for a shelter 



i6 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

from the icy wind and dust. However, our Chinese 
runners keep on like rolHng balls. 

We knock at the doors of two or three hotels 
which have risen up among the ruins out of a con- 
fusion of broken furniture. Everything is full, 
full to overflowing; gold will not buy a loft with 
a mattress. 

Willy-nilly we must beg our board and lodging 
from unknown officers, who give us the most 
friendly hospitality in houses where the holes 
made by shot and shell have been hastily stopped 
up so that the wind may no longer enter. 

Saturday, October 13. 

I have chosen to travel by junk as far as the 
course of the Pei-Ho will permit, the junk serving 
as a lodging in this country where I am forced to 
dally. 

This makes necessary many little preparations. 

The first thing is to make a requisition for this 
junk and to appropriate this species of sarcophagus 
where I am to live under a roof of matting. The 
next is to buy in the more or less ruined shops of 
Tien-Tsin the things necessary for a few days of 
nomadic life, from bedding to arms ; and lastly, to 
hire from the Lazarist Fathers a Chinese person to 
make tea, — young Toum, aged fourteen, with the 
face of a cat and a queue reaching to the ground. 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 



27 



I dined with General Frey, who, with his small 
French detachment, was, as every one knows, the 
first to enter the heart of Pekin, the Imperial City. 
He was good enough to relate to me in detail this 
magnificent journey, the taking of the Marble 
Bridge and his final entrance into the Imperial 
City, — that mysterious place which I shall soon 
see, and into which before him no European had 
ever penetrated. 

As to my own small personal expedition, which 
in comparison with his appears so easy and unim- 
portant, the general kindly concerned himself with 
what we were to drink en route, my servant and I, 
in this time of infection, when the water is a con- 
stant danger on account of human remains, thrown 
there by the Chinese, left lying in all the wells; 
and he made me a present of untold value, — a 
case of eau d'Evian. 



II 



THE TWO GODDESSES OF THE BOXERS 

Sunday, October 14. 

An old Chinese woman, wrinkled as a winter apple, 
timidly opens the door at which we have loudly 
knocked. It stands in the deep shadow of a nar- 
row passageway exhaling unhealthy fetid smells. 



28 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

between walls blackened by filth, where one feels 
as shut in as in the heart of a prison. 

The old woman, an enigmatical figure, looks us 
all over with a blank impenetrable gaze ; then recog- 
nizing among us the chief of the international 
police, she silently steps aside and permits us to 
enter. We follow her into a dark little court. 
Poor late autumn flowers are growing in the old 
walls, and we breathe faint sickly odors. 

We are a group of officers, three French, two 
English, and one Russian, who are there clearly 
by right of conquest. 

Our conductor is a strange creature, balancing 
on the tips of her incredibly small feet. Her gray 
hair fastened with long pins is so tightly drawn 
back that it seems to raise her eyes unduly. Her 
dark dress is indefinite in color, but her parchment- 
like face bears to a high degree that something 
appertaining to a worn-out race, which we are 
wont to call distinction. She appears to be only 
a servant, yet her aspect, her carriage, are discon- 
certing; some mystery broods over her, she seems 
like a refined matron who has resorted to a shame- 
ful clandestine occupation. This whole place, 
moreover, is difficult to describe to those who do 
not know it. 

Beyond the court is a sordid vestibule, then a 
door painted black, with a Chinese inscription 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 29 

consisting of two big red letters. Without knock- 
ing, the old woman draws the bolt and opens it. 

We may be mistaken, but we have come in all 
good faith to pay a visit to two goddesses, — pris- 
oners kept shut up in this palace. For here we 
are in the common, the lower dependencies, the 
secret places of the palace of the viceroy of Pet- 
chili, and to reach this spot we have had to pass 
over the immense desolation of a town with Cy- 
clopean walls which is at present only a mass of 
debris and dead bodies. 

The animation of these ruins, accidentally 
peopled by joyous soldiers, is singular, unique, 
on this Sunday, which is a holiday in camp and 
barracks. In the long streets filled with wreckage 
of all kinds. Zouaves and African chasseurs, arm- 
in-arm with Germans in pointed helmets, pass gaily 
between the walls of roofless houses. There are 
little Japanese soldiers, shining and automatic, 
Russians with flat caps, plumed Bersaglieri, Aus- 
trians, Americans with big felt hats, and Indian 
cavalrymen with enormous turbans. All the flags 
of Europe are floating over the ruins of Tien-Tsin, 
which has been partitioned by the allied armies. 
In certain quarters the Chinese who have gradually 
returned, after their flight, have established bazars 
in the open air in the lovely sunshine of this 
autumn Sunday, — bazars where in the midst of 



30 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

incendiary ashes they sell to the soldiers articles 
picked up in the ruins, porcelains, jars, silk dresses, 
furs. There are so many of these soldiers, so many 
uniforms of every kind on our route, so many 
sentinels presenting arms, that we grow weary 
returning the many salutes received as we pass 
through this unheard-of babel. 

At the farther side of the destroyed city, near 
the high ramparts in front of the palace of the 
viceroy, where we are going to see the goddesses, 
some Chinese, undergoing torture in a kind of 
pillory, are lined up along the wall, with inscrip- 
tions above them describing their offences. Two 
pickets guard the doors with bayonetted guns, 
one an American, the other a Japanese, standing 
alongside of the horrible grinning old stone mon- 
sters who watch, crouching, on either side of the 
entrance. 

There is nothing sumptuous, nothing great in 
this dusty, decrepit palace which we have traversed 
unheeding, but it speaks of real China, of old 
China, grimacing and hostile. There is a profu- 
sion of monsters in marble, in broken faience, and 
in worm-eaten wood, falling to pieces from sheer 
old age or threatening from the edges of roofs to 
do so; frightful forms half buried in sand and 
ashes, with horns, claws, forked tongues, and big 
squinting eyes. 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 31 

In the grim walled court a few late roses are 
still in blossom under trees a century old. 

Now, after various turns along badly lighted 
passages, we reach the goddesses' door, — the one 
marked with two big red letters. The old Chinese 
woman, ever mute and mysterious, with head held 
high but with lifeless eyes persistently downcast, 
pushes open the black doors, with a gesture of 
submission which means : " Here they are, look 
at them ! " 

In a room which is almost dark and where the 
evening sun never enters, two poor girls, two sis- 
ters who look alike, are seated with bowed heads 
amid lamentable disorder, in positions indicative 
of supreme consternation, — one on a chair, the 
other on the edge of an ebony bed which they must 
share at night. They are dressed in humble black, 
but here and there on the floor are scattered shin- 
ing silks and tunics embroidered in big flowers 
and gold chimaeras, — the garments they put on 
when going to meet the armies, in the midst of 
whistling bullets on days of battle, — their attire 
as warriors and goddesses. 

For they are a kind of Jeanne d'Arc, — if it is 
not blasphemy to pronounce a name of almost 
ideal purity in this connection, — they are the god- 
desses of the incomprehensible Boxers, so atro- 
cious and at the same time so admirable : hysterical 



32 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

creatures, exciting both the hatred and terror of 
the foreigner, who one day fled without fighting 
in a panic of fear, and the next with the shrieks 
of the possessed threw themselves straight into 
the face of death, under a shower of bullets from 
troops ten times as numerous as themselves. 

The goddesses, taken prisoners, are the property, 
the curious bibelot, if one may use the word, of 
the seven Allies. They are not badly treated. 
They are merely shut up for fear they will commit 
suicide, which has become a fixed idea with them. 
What will be their fate? Already their captors 
are tired of seeing them and don't know what to 
do with them. 

On a day of defeat the junk in which they 
sought refuge was surrounded, and they, with 
their mother, who followed them everywhere, 
threw themselves into the water. The soldiers 
fished them out fainting. The goddesses after 
much care came to their senses. But the mamma 
never again opened her oblique old Chinese eyes. 
The girls were made to believe that she had been 
taken to a hospital and would soon come back. 
At first the prisoners were brave, animated, 
haughty, and always well dressed. But this very 
morning they have been told that their mother is 
no more, and it is that which has stunned them, 
like a physical blow. 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN ^3 

Having no money to buy mourning dress, which 
in China is always white, they asked to be allowed 
white leather shoes — which at this moment cover 
their doll-like feet, and which are as essential here 
as the crape veil is with us. 

They are both slender and of a waxen pallor, 
scarcely pretty, but with a certain grace, a certain 
charm as they stand there, one in front of the 
other, without tears, with drooping eyes and with 
arms falling straight at their sides. They do not 
raise their eyes even to ascertain who enters or 
what is wanted of them. They do not stir as we 
come in, nothing matters to them now. They 
await death, indifferent to everything. 

They inspire in us an unlooked-for respect by 
the dignity of their despair, respect and infinite 
compassion. We have nothing to say to one an- 
other, and are as embarrassed at being there as 
though we had been guilty of some indiscretion. 

It occurred to us to put some money on the 
disordered bed; but one of the sisters, while ap- 
pearing not to see us, threw the pieces of silver 
onto the floor and with a gesture invited the ser- 
vant to dispose of them as she wished. So that 
this was on our part a further mistake. 

There is such an abyss of misunderstanding 
between European officers and Boxer goddesses 
that it is impossible to show our sympathy for 

3 



34 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

them in any way. So we, who came to be amused 
by a curious sight, depart in silence with a tight- 
ening of the heartstrings at the thought of the 
two poor creatures imprisoned in a gloomy room 
in the fading evening light. 

My junk, with five Chinese aboard, will go up 
the river under the French flag, which is already 
a protection. The war department has decided it 
to be more prudent — although my servant and 
I are armed — to send two soldiers with us, two 
men with horses carrying guns and munitions. 

Beyond Tien-Tsin, where I have spent another 
day, one may go an hour further by train in the 
direction of Pekin, as far as the town of Yang- 
Soon. My junk, with two soldiers, Toum, and 
the baggage, will await me there at a bend in the 
river, and has gone on ahead to-day with a 
military escort. 

I dine this evening with the consul-general, the 
one who escaped being shot almost by miracle, 
although his flag was for a long time, during the 
siege, a mark for the Chinese gunners. 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN ss 

III 

Monday, October 15. 

I LEFT Tien-Tsin by railway at eight o'clock in 
the morning. An hour on the road, across the 
same old plain, the same desolation, the same 
cutting wind, the same dust. Then the ruins of 
Yang-Soon, where the train stops because there 
is no road left; from this point on, the Boxers 
have destroyed everything, the bridges are cut, 
the stations burned, and the rails scattered over 
the country. 

My junk is there awaiting me by the river's 
side. For the present, for three days at least, 
I must arrange for a life on the water, in the little 
sarcophagus which is the cabin of this queer boat, 
under the roof of matting which gives a view of 
the sky through a thousand holes, and which to- 
night will permit the white frost to disturb our 
slumbers. But this room in which I am to live, 
eat and sleep in complete promiscuity with my 
French companions is so small, so very small that 
I dismiss one of the soldiers. We could never 
manage there with four. 

The Chinese of my train, ragged and sordid, 
receive me with profound bows. One takes the 
rudder, the others jump onto the bank, where they 
harness themselves to the end of a long line at- 



S6 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

tached to the mast of the junk — and we are off, 
being towed against the current of the Pei-Ho, a 
heavy poisonous stream in which, here and there 
amongst the reeds on the banks, parts of human 
bodies appear. 

The soldier I have kept is named Renaud, and 
he tells me he comes from Calvados. He and my 
servant Osman, both happy to be going to Pekin, 
vie with one another in gaiety and good-will and 
in comical ingenious inventions to make our lodg- 
ing more convenient. The trip, in spite of 
unpleasant surroundings, begins to the sound of 
their merry childlike laughter. We depart in the 
full morning light, under the rays of a deceptive 
sunshine which pretends it is summer although 
an icy wind is blowing. 

The seven allied nations have established mili- 
tary posts from point to point along the Pei-Ho, 
to insure communication by way of the river 
between Pekin and the gulf of Petchili, where 
their ships come in. Toward eleven o'clock I stop 
the junk near a large Chinese fort from which 
floats the French flag. 

It is one of our posts occupied by Zouaves ; we 
get out to get our rations, enough bread, wine, 
preserves, sugar, and tea for two days. We shall 
receive no more now until Tong-Tchow (City of 
Celestial Purity), which we shall reach day after 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 37 

to-morrow in the evening, if nothing untoward 
prevents. Then the towing of our junk begins 
again; slowly and monotonously we move be- 
tween gloomy devastated banks. 

The country around us remains unchanged. 
On both sides as far as the eye can reach are 
fields of " sorghos " — which is a kind of giant 
millet much taller than our maize. The war pre- 
vented its being harvested in season, and so it 
stands reddened by the frost. The monotonous 
little tow-path, a narrow strip on the grayish soil, 
is on a level with the cold fetid water, at the foot 
of the eternal dried sorghos, which forms an end- 
less curtain all along the river. Sometimes a 
phantom village appears on the horizon; as one 
approaches it, it proves to be only ruins and the 
bodies of the dead. 

I have a mandarin's arm-chair in my junk on 
which to enthrone myself when the sun shines and 
the wind is not too cutting. More frequently I 
prefer to walk along the shore doing my miles in 
company with our towers, who plod along bending 
over like beasts of burden, with the rope passed 
over the shoulders. Osman and Renaud peer out 
of a port-hole after me as we walk along the 
track of gray earth shut in by the uninterrupted 
border of sorghos and by the river, the wind blow- 
ing sharply all the while. We are often obliged to 



38 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

step aside suddenly because of a dead man — with 
one leg stretched out across the path — looking 
slyly up at us. 

The events of the day are the meeting of junks 
going down the river and passing ours. They go 
in long lines fastened together, flying the flag of 
some one of the allied nations, and carrying the 
sick, the wounded, and the spoils of war. 

In the twilight we pass the remains of a village 
in which the Russians, on their way to Manchuria, 
are encamped for the night. They are taking 
carved furniture out of an abandoned house, 
breaking it up and making a fire of it. As we go 
on we see the flames mounting in great jets, and 
reaching out to the sorghos near by; for a long 
time its incendiary light is visible behind us, in the 
mournful empty grayness of the distance. This 
first nightfall on our junk is full of gloom in the 
strange solitude into which hour by hour we pene- 
trate still further. The shadows are deep about 
us and there are many dead along the ground. In 
the confused and infinite darkness, all about us 
seems hostile or gloomy, and the cold increases 
with the silence and obscurity. 

The impression of melancholy disappears at 
supper when our Chinese lantern is lighted, illumi- 
nating the sarcophagus, which we have closed as 
tightly as possible to shut out the wind. I have 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 39 

invited my two companions to my table — my 
comical little table, which they themselves have 
made from a broken oar and an old plank. The 
bread seems exquisite to us after our long walk 
on the bank; to warm us we have the hot tea 
which young Toum has prepared for us over a 
fire of sorghos, and when hunger is assuaged and 
Turkish cigarettes give forth their soothing clouds 
of smoke, we have almost a feeling of home and 
comfort in our poor shelter enveloped in outside 
darkness. 

Then comes bedtime — although the junk moves 
on, our towers continuing their march by feeling 
their way along the sorghos of the dark path, so 
full of surprises. Toum, although he is an elegant 
young Chinaman, goes to roost with the others 
of his race in the straw in the hold. The rest of us, 
still dressed of course, with our boots on and fire- 
arms at hand, stretch out on the narrow camp-bed 
of our cabin, looking at the stars, which, as soon 
as the lantern is out, appear between the meshes 
of our matting-roof, shining brightly in the frosty 
sky. 

Distant shots reach us from far ofT, indicating 
nocturnal dramas with which we have no concern, 
and just before midnight two guards, one Jap- 
anese and the other German, try to stop our junk ; 
we are obliged to get up to discuss the matter, and 



40 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

by means of a hastily lighted lantern, show the 
French flag and the stripes that I wear on my 
sleeve. 

At midnight the Chinese make fast our boat, at 
a spot they say is safe, so that they too may rest. 
We all fall into a profound slumber in the icy 
night. 

IV 

Tuesday, October i6. 

We are up at daylight and off again. In the cold, 
magnificent dawn, upon a clear pink sky, the sun 
rises and shines without heat on the green plain, 
and on the deserted place where we have slept. 

All at once I leap to the ground with an instinc- 
tive longing for activity, anxious to move, to walk. 
Horrors! At a turn in the path as I am running 
fast without looking where I am going, I almost 
step on something in the form of a cross, — a 
naked corpse lying face downward with extended 
arms, half buried in the mud and of a correspond- 
ing color ; the dogs or the crows, or some Chinese 
who wanted the queue, have taken the scalp, 
leaving the cranium white and minus hair or skin. 

It grows colder each day as we get farther away 
from the sea, and the plain begins gradually to 
slope upward. 

Junks pass as they did yesterday, going down 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 41 

the river in files with military stores, and are under 
the care of soldiers of all the nations of Europe. 
Then come long intervals of solitude, during which 
no living thing appears in this region of millet and 
reeds. The wind that blows more and more bit- 
terly is healthful; it dilates the chest, and for the 
moment redoubles life. So we march along be- 
tween the sorghos and the river, on the everlasting 
frosty path that leads to Pekin, without fatigue, 
without any desire to hurry, but always ahead of 
the solemn Chinamen, who, tugging at their ropes, 
continue to draw our floating house, keeping up 
their pace with the regularity of machines. 

There are a few trees now on the banks, willows 
with very green leaves of a variety unknown to us ; 
they seem untouched by the autumn, and their 
beautiful color is in striking contrast to the rusty 
tones of the grass and the dying sorghos. There 
are gardens too, — abandoned gardens that be- 
longed to hamlets that have been burned; our 
Chinamen sometimes send one of their number on 
a marauding expedition, and he brings back arm- 
fuls of vegetables for our meals. 

Osman and Renaud, as we pass by ruined 
houses, sometimes pick up articles which they 
think necessary for the embellishment of our 
dwelling, — small mirrors, carved seats, lanterns, 
even bunches of artificial flowers made of rice 



42 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

paper, which may have adorned the headdresses 
of massacred or fleeing Chinese ladies, and which 
they naively use to decorate the walls of the room. 
The interior of our sarcophagus soon takes on an 
air of distinction quite droll and barbaric. 

It is astonishing how soon we accustom our- 
selves to the perfectly simple life on the junk, an 
existence of healthy fatigue, devouring appetites, 
and heavy sleep. 

Toward the evening of this day the mountains 
of Mongolia, those which tower above Pekin, 
begin to appear on the distant horizon, on the very 
border of this infinitely level land. 

There is something especially lugubrious about 
the twilight to-day. The sinuous Pei-Ho, narrow- 
ing hour by hour at each turn, seems to be but a 
tiny stream between its silent shores, and we feel 
altogether too much shut in by the confused 
growth which conceals such sombre things. The 
day goes out in one of those cold dead colorings 
that are a specialty of Northern winters. All that 
there is in the way of light comes from the water, 
which reflects more vividly than the sky; the 
river, like a mirror, reflects the sunset yellows ; one 
might even say that it exaggerates the sad light, as 
it runs between the inverted images of the reeds, 
the monotonous sorghos and the already black 
silhouettes of the few trees. The solitude is deeper 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 43 

than that of yesterday. The cold and the silence 
settle down upon one like a winding sheet. There 
is a penetrating melancholy in feeling the slow 
oncoming of the night in this nameless spot, a 
certain anguish in looking at the last reflections of 
the neighboring reeds, — reflections which con- 
tinue, even though ahead of us darkness claims the 
hostile and unknown distance. 

Happily, the hour for supper is here, the longed- 
for hour, for we are very hungry. In our little 
retreat I shall find again the red light of our lan- 
tern, the excellent soldier's bread, the smoking tea 
served by Toum, and the cheerfulness of my two 
good servants. 

Toward nine o'clock, just as we pass a group 
of junks full of people, all Chinese, — marauders' 
junks evidently, — we hear cries behind us, — 
cries of distress and death, cries that are horrible 
in the stillness. Toum, who lends his fine ear and 
understands all that these people are saying, ex- 
plains that they are engaged in killing an old man 
because he has stolen some rice. We were not 
numerous enough or sure enough of our party, to 
interfere. I fired two shots into the air in their 
direction, and all became still as if by magic; we 
had, no doubt, saved the head of the old rice thief 
at least until the morning. 

Then it is quiet until daylight. After midnight, 



44 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

tied up no matter where among the reeds, we all 
sleep a sleep that is undisturbed. It is calm and 
cold under the stars. There are a few shots fired 
in the distance. We are conscious of them, but 
they do not wake us. 

Wednesday, October 17. 

We rise at daybreak and run along the bank in 
the white frost; the dawn is pink, and soon the 
sun rises bright and clear. 

Wishing to take a short cut through the ever- 
lasting sorghos fields and to rejoin the junk which 
is obliged to follow a long turn in the river further 
on, we cross the ruins of a hamlet where fright- 
fully contorted bodies are lying, on whose black- 
ened members the ice has formed little crystals 
that shine like a coating of salt. 

After our noon dinner, as we emerge from the 
semi-obscurity of our sarcophagus, the Chinamen 
point to the horizon. Tong-Tchow, the *' City 
of Celestial Purity," is beginning to show itself; 
great black walls surmounted with miradors, and 
an astonishingly tall, slender tower, of a very 
Chinese outline with twenty superimposed roofs. 

It is all distant still, and the plains about us are 
full of horrors. From a stranded junk emerges a 
long dead arm, of a bluish tone. And the bodies 
of cattle borne by the current pass by us in a per- 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 45 

feet proeession, all swollen and exhaling a bovine 
pest. A cemetery must have been violated here- 
abouts, for on the mud of the shore there are 
empty coffins with human bones alongside them. 



V 

AT TONG-TCHOW 

ToNG-TcHOW, which occupies two or three kilo- 
metres along the bank, is one of those immense 
Chinese cities — more densely populated than many 
of the capitals of Europe — whose very name is 
almost unheard of with us. To-day, needless to 
say, it is but the ghost of a city, and as one ap- 
proaches it it does not take long to perceive that it 
is now empty and in ruin. 

We approach slowly. At the foot of the high 
black crenellated walls, junks are crowded all along 
the river. On the bank the same excitement as at 
Taku and at Tien-Tsin is complicated by some 
hundreds of Mongolian camels crouching in the 
dust. 

There are soldiers, invaders, cannons, materials 
of war. Cossacks who are trying captured horses 
go and come at full gallop among the various 
groups, with great savage cries. 

The various national colors of the European 



46 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

Allies are hoisted in profusion; they float from 
high up on the black walls pierced by cannon balls, 
from the camps, from the junks, from the ruins. 
And the continual wind — the implacable icy wind 
carrying the infected dust that smells of the dead 
— plays upon these flags, which give an ironical 
air of festivity to all the devastation. 

I look for the French flags so as to stop my 
junk in our neighborhood and to go at once to 
our quarters. I can try our country's rations there 
this evening; furthermore, not being able to con- 
tinue our trip on the river, I must procure for to- 
morrow morning a cart and some saddle horses. 

Stopping near a place which seems to belong to 
us, I ask some Zouaves the road to our quarters; 
they promptly, eagerly, and politely offer to accom- 
pany me. Together we go on toward a great door 
in the thick black wall. 

At this entrance to the city they have, by means 
of ropes and boards, established a cattle-yard for 
the purpose of supplying food for the soldiers. 
Besides a few live animals there are three or four 
on the ground, dead from the bovine pest, and 
some Chinese prisoners have this moment come 
to drag them to the river, the general rendezvous 
for dead bodies. 

We enter a street where our soldiers are em- 
ployed at various kinds of work in the midst of 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 47 

heaps of rubbish. Through the broken doors and 
windows of the houses the wretched interiors are 
visible; everything is in fragments, broken, de- 
stroyed as though for pleasure. From the thick 
dust raised by the north wind and by our own 
footsteps rises an intolerable odor of the dead. 

For two months the rage for destruction, the 
frenzy for murder, has beset this unfortunate 
" City of Celestial Purity," invaded by the troops 
of eight or ten different countries. She felt the 
first shock of all these hereditary hatreds. First 
the Boxers came her way. Then the Japanese, 
— heroic little soldiers of whom I do not wish to 
speak ill, but who destroy and kill as barbarian 
armies were wont to do. Still less do I wish to 
speak ill of our friends, the Russians; but they 
have sent here their Cossack neighbors from Tar- 
tary, and half-Mongolian Siberians, all admirable 
under fire, but looking at war in the Asiatic 
fashion. Then there are the cruel cavalrymen of 
India sent by Great Britain. America has let 
loose her soldiers. And when, in the first desire 
for vengeance for Chinese cruelties, the Italians, 
the Germans, the Austrians, and the French ar- 
rived, nothing was left intact. 

Our commander and his officers have impro- 
vised lodgings and of^ces in some of the larger 
Chinese houses, hastily repairing the roofs and 



48 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

walls. In strong contrast to the rudeness of these 
places are the sumptuous wood carvings and the 
tall Chinese vases found intact among the ruins. 

They promise me carriages and horses for to- 
morrow morning to be ready at sunrise on the 
bank near my junk. When all is settled there is 
about an hour of daylight left, so I wander about 
the ruins of the city with my armed followers, 
Osman, Renaud, and Chinese Toum. 

As one gets farther away from the quarters 
where our soldiers are, the horrors increase with 
the solitude and the silence. 

We come first to the street of the China mer- 
chants, great warehouses where the products of 
the Canton manufactories were stored. It must 
have been a fine street judging from the carved 
and gilded but ruined fagades which remain. 
To-day the yawning shops, almost demolished, 
seem to vomit onto the highway their heaps of 
broken fragments. One walks on precious enamel 
decorated with brilHant flowers, for it literally 
covers the ground so that one crushes it in pass- 
ing. There is no knowing whose work this was; 
it was already done when our troops arrived. But 
it must have taken whole days of furious attack 
with boots and clubs to reduce it all to suoh small 
bits; jars, plates, cups, are ground to atoms, pul- 
verized, together with human bones and hair. At 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 49 

the back of these warehouses the coarser wares 
occupied a sort of interior court. These courts 
with their old walls are particularly lugubrious 
this evening, in the dying light. In one of them 
we found a mangy dog trying to drag something 
from underneath a pile of broken plates — it was 
the body of a child whose skull had been broken. 
The dog began to eat the flesh that was left on the 
legs of the poor dead thing. 

There was no one to be seen in the long dev- 
astated streets where the framework of the houses, 
as well as the tiles and the bricks, had tumbled 
down. Crows croaked in the silence. Horrible 
dogs who feed on the dead fled before us, hanging 
their tails. We had glimpses of Chinese prowlers, 
wretched-looking creatures, trying to find some- 
thing to steal, or of some of the dispossessed 
timidly creeping along the walls attempting to 
find out what has become of their homes. 

The sun is already low, and the wind is rising 
as it does every night. We shiver with the sudden 
cold. Empty houses fill the shadows. 

These houses are all of considerable extent, with 
recesses, a succession of courts, rock work, basins, 
and melancholy gardens. Crossing the threshold, 
guarded by the ever-present granite monsters worn 
by the rubbing gf hands, one finds oneself in an 
endless series of apartments. The intimate details 

4 



so THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

of Chinese life are touchingly and graciously re- 
vealed by the arrangement of potted plants, flower- 
beds, and little balconies where bindweed and other 
vines are trained. 

Here, surrounded with playthings, is a poor 
doll, which doubtless belonged to some child 
whose head has been broken; there a cage hangs 
with the bird still in it, dried up in one corner 
with its feet in the air. 

Everything is sacked, removed, or destroyed; 
furniture is broken, the contents of drawers 
thrown about the floors, papers, blood-stained 
clothing, Chinese women's shoes spattered with 
blood, and here and there limbs, hands, heads, 
and clumps of hair. 

In certain of the gardens . neglected plants 
continue to blossom gaily, running over into the 
walks amongst the human remains. Around an 
arbor which conceals the body of a woman, twines 
pink convolvulus in blossoming garlands. The 
blossom is still open at this late hour of the day 
and in spite of the cold nights, which quite upsets 
our European ideas of convolvulus. 

In one of the houses back in a recess in a dark 
loft, something moves! Two women cower piti- 
fully! Finding themselves discovered, they are 
seized with terror and fall at our feet, trembling, 
weeping, clasping their hands, and begging for 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 51 

mercy. One is young, the other older, and they 
look alike. Mother and daughter ! " Pardon, sir, 
pardon; we are afraid," translates little Toum 
naively, understanding their broken words. Evi- 
dently they expect the worst of us — and then 
death. For how long have they lived in this hole, 
these two poor things, thinking with each step that 
resounds on the pavement of the deserted court that 
their end has come? We leave them a few pieces 
of silver, which perhaps humiliates without helping 
them, but it is all that we can do, and then we go. 
Another house, a house of the rich this one is, 
with a profusion of potted plants in enamelled 
porcelain jars in the sad little garden. In an 
apartment that is already dark (for decidedly 
night is coming on, the uncertainty of twilight is 
beginning), but where the havoc is less exten- 
sive, for there are great chests and beautiful arm- 
chairs still intact, Osman suddenly recoils with 
terror before something which emerges from a 
bucket placed upon a board. Two torn thighs, 
the whole lower part of a woman thrust into this 
bucket with the feet in the air! Undoubtedly the 
mistress of this elegant home. Her body? Who 
knows what has been done with the body? But 
here is the head, under this arm-chair, near the 
skeleton of a cat. The mouth is open, showing 
the teeth, and the hair is long. 



52 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

In addition to the broad, almost straight streets 
whose desolation is visible from one end to the 
other, there are little tortuous streets leading up 
to gray walls. They are the most desolate to enter 
at this twilight hour, with only the cry of the crow 
as an accompaniment. Little stone gnomes guard 
their mysterious doors, and their pavements are 
strewn with human heads with long queues. One 
approaches certain turns in the streets with a heavy 
heart. It is over, and nothing in the world would 
tempt us to enter again at this hour one of those 
frightfully still houses where one meets with so 
many gruesome encounters. 

We had gone far into the city before night 
came on, and the silence had become intoler- 
able. We return to the region where the troops 
are quartered, cut by the north wind and chilled 
by the cold and gloom; our return is rapid; 
broken china and other debris impossible to de- 
fine crackle under our feet. 

The banks are lined with soldiers warming 
themselves and cooking their suppers over bright 
fires, where they are burning chairs, tables, and 
bits of carved wood or timbers. Coming out of 
the Dantesque streets, it all bespeaks joy and com- 
fort to us. 

Near our junk there is a canteen, Improvised by 
a Maltese, where intoxicants are sold to soldiers. 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN S3 

I send my men to get whatever liquors they want 
for our supper, for we need something to warm 
and cheer us if possible. We celebrate with smok- 
ing soup, tea, chartreuse, and I don't know what 
besides, in our little matting-covered dwelling, 
tied up this time on the pestilential mud and en- 
veloped as usual by cold and darkness. 

At dessert, when the hour for smoking arrives 
in our sarcophagus, Renaud, to whom I have given 
the floor, tells us that his squadron is encamped on 
the borders of a Chinese cemetery in Tien-Tsin, 
and that the soldiers of another European nation 
(I prefer not to say which) in the same vicinity 
spend their time ransacking the graves and taking 
from them the money which it is the custom to 
bury with the dead. 

" To me, colonel " (I am colonel to him, as he 
is ignorant of the naval appellation of command- 
ant, which, with us, goes with five gold stripes), 
*' to me it does not seem right. Even though they 
are Chinese, we ought to leave their dead in peace. 
What disgusts me is that they cut their rations up 
on the planks of the coffins. And I say to them, 
' Put it on the outside if you will, but not on the 
inside, which has touched the corpse.' But these 
savages, colonel, laugh at me." 



54 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 



VI 

Thursday, October i8. 

It is a surprise to awaken to a dark and sombre 
sky. We counted upon having, as on the preceding 
mornings, the almost never clouded autumn and 
winter sun, which in China shines and warms even 
when everything is frozen hard, and which has, 
up to this time, helped us to support the gruesome 
sights of our journey. 

When we open the door of the junk just before 
dawn, our horses and cart are there, having just 
arrived. On the forbidding shore some Mon- 
golians with their camels are crouched about a fire 
which has burned all night in the dust; and behind 
their motionless groups the high walls of the city, 
of an inky blackness, rise to meet the low-hanging 
clouds. 

We leave our small nomadic equipment in the 
junk, in the care of two marines of the Tong- 
Tchow division, who will look after it until our 
return, and also our most precious possession, the 
last of the bottles of pure water given us by the 
general. 

The last stage of our journey is made in the 
company of the French consul-general at Tien- 
Tsin and of the chancellor of the legation, who are 



ON THE WAY _ TO PEKIN 55 

both bound for Pekin, under the escort of a 
marshal and three or four artillerymen. 

Our long, monotonous route leads us across 
fields of sorghos reddened by the early frosts, and 
through deserted villages where no one is stirring. 
It is a cold, gray morning, and the autumn country, 
upon which a fine rain is falling, is in mourning. 

At certain moments I almost fancy myself on 
the roads of the Basque country in November, 
amid the uncut maize. Then all at once some 
unknown symbol arises to recall China, — either 
a tomb of mysterious shape or a stele mounted 
upon enormous granite tortoises. 

From time to time we meet military convoys of 
one nation or another, or lines of ambulances. In 
one place some Russians have taken shelter from 
a shower in the ruins of a village; in another a 
number of Americans, who have discovered some 
hidden clothing in an abandoned house, go on their 
way rejoicing; with fur mantles on their backs. 

Then there are tombs, always tombs, from one 
end to the other; China is strewn with them; 
some are almost hidden by the roadside, others are 
magnificently isolated in enclosures which are like 
mortuary thickets of dark green cedars. 

Ten o'clock. We should be approaching Pekin, 
although as yet nothing indicates its nearness. 
We have not seen a single Chinese since our de- 



SG THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

parture; the whole country is deserted and silent 
under a veil of almost imperceptible rain. 

We are going to pass not far from the tomb of 
an empress, it seems, and the French chancellor, 
who knows the neighborhood, proposes that he and 
I make a detour to look at it. So, leaving the 
others to continue their route, we take a side path 
through the tall, damp grass. 

A canal and a pool soon appear, of a pale color, 
under the indefinite sky. There is no one to be 
seen anywhere; the sad quiet of a depopulated 
country prevails. The tomb on the opposite bank 
scarcely peeps out from its cedar wood, which is 
walled about on all sides. We see little but the 
first marble gates leading to it and the avenue of 
white stele which is finally lost under the myste- 
rious trees. It is all rather distant, and is repro- 
duced in the mirror of the pool in long inverted 
reflections. Near us the tall leaden stems of 
some lotus killed by the frost bend over the water, 
where the rain drops have traced faint rings. The 
whitish spheres seen here and there are heads of 
the dead. 

When we rejoin our company they promise that 
we shall enter Pekin in half an hour. After the 
complications and delays of our journey we almost 
believe we shall never arrive. Besides, it is in- 
credible that so large a city could be so near in 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 57 

this deserted country, such a little way ahead 
of us. 

" Pekin does not proclaim itself," explains my 
new companion. " Pekin takes hold of you ; when 
you perceive it you are there." 

The road passes through groups of cedars and 
willows with falling leaves, and in the concen- 
tration of our effort to see the City Celestial we 
trot on in the fine rain, which does not wet us at 
all, so drying are the northern winds, carrying the 
dust always and everywhere; we trot on without 
speaking. 

" Pekin ! " suddenly exclaims one of our com- 
panions, pointing out an obscure mass just rising 
above the trees, — a crenellated dungeon of super- 
human proportions. 

Pekin! In a few seconds, during which I am 
feeling the spell of this name, a big gloomy wall, 
of unheard-of height, is disclosed, and goes on 
endlessly in the gray, empty solitude, which re- 
sembles an accursed steppe. It is like a complete 
change of scene, performed without the noise of 
machinery or the sounds of an orchestra, in a 
silence more impressive than any music. We are 
at the very foot of the bastions and ramparts, 
dominated by them, although a turn in the road 
had up to this moment concealed them. At the 
same time the rain is turning to snow, whose 



58 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

white flakes mingle with the suspended dirt and 
dust. The wall of Pekin overwhelms us, a giant 
thing of Babylonian aspect, intensely black under 
the dead light of a snowy autumn morning. It 
rises toward the sky like a cathedral, but it goes 
on; it is prolonged, always the same, for miles. 
Not a person on the outskirts of the city, not a 
green thing all along these walls! The ground 
is uneven, dusty, ashen in color, and strewn with 
rags, bones, and even an occasional skull! From 
the top of each black battlement a crow salutes us 
as we pass, cawing mournfully. 

The clouds are so thick and low that we do not 
see clearly; we are oppressed by long-looked- for 
Pekin, which has just made its abrupt and discon- 
certing appearance above our heads; we advance 
to the intermittent cries of the crows, rather silent 
ourselves, overpowered at being there, longing to 
see some movement, some life, some one or some 
thing come out from these walls. 

From a gate ahead of us, from a hole in the 
colossal enclosure, slowly emerges an enormous 
brown, woolly animal like a gigantic sheep; then 
two, then three, then ten. A Mongolian caravan 
begins to pass us, always in the same silence, 
broken only by the croakings of the ravens. 
These enormous Mongolian camels, with their 
furry coats, muffs on their legs, and manes 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 



59 



like lions, file in an endless procession past our 
frightened horses. They wear neither bells nor 
rattles, like the thin beasts of the Arabian deserts ; 
their feet sink deep into the sand, which muffles 
their footsteps so the silence is not broken by their 
march. 

Perceived through a veil of fine snow and black 
dust, the caravan has passed us, and moves on 
without a sound, like a phantom thing. We find 
ourselves alone again, under this Titanic wall, 
from which the crows keep watch. And now it is 
our turn to enter the gloomy city through the 
gates by which the Mongolians have just passed 
out. 

VII • 

AT THE FRENCH LEGATION 

Here we are at the gates, the double triple gates, 
deep as tunnels, and formed of the most powerful 
masonry, — gates surmounted by deadly dun- 
geons, each one five stories high, with strange 
curved roofs, — extravagant dungeons, colossal 
black things above a black enclosing wall. 

Our horses' hoofs sink deeper and deeper, dis- 
appear, in fact, in the coal-black dust, which is 
blinding and all-pervading, in the atmosphere 
as well as on the ground, in spite of the light 



6o THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

rain and the snowflakes which make our faces 
tingle. 

Noiselessly, as though we were stepping upon 
wadding or felt, we pass under the enormous vaults 
and enter the land of ruin and ashes. 

A few slatternly beggars shivering in corners 
in their blue rags, a few corpse-eating dogs, like 
those whose acquaintance we have already made 
en route, — and that is all. Silence and solitude 
within as well as without these walls. Nothing 
but rubbish and ruin, ruin. 

The land of rubbish and ashes^ and little gray 
bricks, — little bricks all alike, scattered in count- 
less myriads upon the sites of houses that have 
been destroyed, or upon the pavement of what once 
were streets. 

Little gray bricks, — this is the sole material of 
which Pekin was built ; a city of small, low houses 
decorated with a lacework of gilded wood; a city 
of which only a mass of curious debris is left, 
after fire and shell have crumbled away its flimsy 
materials. 

We have come into the city at one of the corners 
where there was the fiercest fighting, — the Tartar 
quarter, which contained the European legations. 

Long straight streets may still be traced in this 
infinite labyrinth of ruins ; ahead of us all is gray 
or black; to the sombre gray of the fallen brick 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 6i 

IS added the monotonous tone which follows a 
fire, — the gloom of ashes and the gloom of coal. 

Sometimes in crossing the road they form ob- 
stacles, — these tiresome little bricks ; these are 
the remains of barricades where fighting must have 
taken place. 

After a few hundred metres we enter the street 
of the legations, upon which for so many months 
the anxious attention of the whole world was fixed. 

Everything is in ruins, of course ; yet European 
flags float on every piece of wall, and we suddenly 
find, as we come out of the smaller streets, the 
same animation as at Tien-Tsin, — a continual 
coming and going of officers and soldiers, and an 
astonishing array of uniforms. 

A big flag marks the entrance to what was our 
legation, two monsters in white marble crouch at 
the threshold; this is the etiquette for all Chinese 
palaces. Two of our soldiers guard the door which 
I enter, my thoughts recurring to the heroes who 
defended it. 

We finally dismount, amid piles of rubbish, in an 
inner square near a chapel, and at the entrance to 
a garden where the trees are losing their leaves as 
an effect of the icy winds. The walls about us are 
so pierced with balls that they look like sieves. 
The pile of rubbish at our right is the legation 



62 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

proper, destroyed by the explosion of a Chinese 
mine. At our left is the chancellor's house, where 
the brave defenders of the place took refuge during 
the siege, because it was in a less exposed situa- 
tion. They have offered to take me in there; it 
was not destroyed, but everything is topsy-turvy, 
as though it were the day after a battle; and in 
the room where I am to sleep the plasterers are at 
work repairing the walls, which will not be finished 
until this evening. 

As a new arrival, I am taken on a pilgrimage to 
the garden where those of our sailors who fell on 
the field of honor were hastily buried amid a 
shower of balls. There is no grass here, no blos- 
soming plants, only a gray soil trampled by the 
combatants, — crumbling from dryness and cold, 
— trees without leaves and with branches broken 
by shot, and over all a gloomy, lowering sky, with 
snowflakes that are cutting. 

We remove our hats as we enter this garden, 
for we know not upon whose remains we may be 
treading. The graves will soon be marked, I doubt 
not, but have not yet been, so one is not sure as 
one walks of not having under foot some one of 
the dead who merits a crown. 

In this house of the chancellor, spared as by a 
miracle, the besieged lived helter-skelter, slept on 
a floor space the size of which was day by day 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 63 

decreased by the damage done by shot and shell, 
and were in imminent danger of death. 

In the beginning — their number, alas, rapidly 
diminished — there were sixty French sailors and 
twenty Austrians, meeting death, side by side, with 
equally magnificent courage. To them were added 
a few French volunteers, who took their turns on 
the barricades or on the roofs, and two foreigners, 
M. and Madame Rosthorn of the Austrian lega- 
tion. Our officers in command of the defence 
were Lieutenant Darcy and midshipman Herber; 
the latter was struck full in the face by a ball, and 
sleeps to-day in the garden. 

The horrible part of this siege was that no pity 
was to be expected from the besiegers, if, starved, 
and at the end of their strength, it became neces- 
sary for the besieged to surrender, it was death, 
and death with atrocious Chinese refinements to 
prolong the paroxysms of suffering. 

•Neither was there the hope of escape by some 
supreme sortie; they were in the midst of a 
swarming city, they were enclosed in a labyrinth 
of buildings that sheltered a crowd of enemies, 
and were still further imprisoned by the feeling 
that, surrounding them, walling in the whole, was 
the colossal black rampart of Pekin. 

It was during the torrid period of the Chinese 
summer; it was often necessary to fight while 



64 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

dying of thirst, blinded by dust, under a sun as 
destructive as the balls, and with the constant 
sickening fear of infection from dead bodies. 

Yet a charming young woman was there with 
them, — an Austrian, to whom should be given, 
one of our most beautiful French* crosses. Alone 
amongst men in distress, she kept an even cheerful- 
ness of the best kind, she cared for the wounded, 
prepared food for the sick sailpi^ with her own 
hands, and then went off to aid in carrying bricks 
and sand for the barricades or to take her turn as 
watch on the roof. 

Day by day the circle closed in upon the be- 
sieged as their ranks grew thinner and the garden 
filled with the dead; gradually they lost ground, 
although disputing with the enemy, who were 
legion, every piece of wall, every pile of bricks. 

And when one sees their little barricades hastily 
erected during the night out of nothing at all, and 
knows that five or six sailors succeeded in defend- 
ing them (for five or six toward the end were all 
that could be spared), it really seems as though 
there were something supernatural about it all. 
As I walked through the garden with one of its 
defenders, and he said to me, " At the foot of 
that little wall we held out for so many days," 
and '' In front of this little barricade we re- 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 65 

sisted for a week," it seemed a marvellous tale of 
heroism. 

And their last intrenchment ! It was alongside 
the house, — a ditch dug tentatively in a single 
night, banked up with a few poor sacks of earth 
and sand ; it was all they had to keep out the exe- 
cutioners, who, scarcely six metres away, were 
threatening them with death from the top of a 
wall. 

Beyond is the *' cemetery," that is, the corner 
of the garden in which they buried their dead, until 
the still more terrible days when they had to put 
them here and there, concealing the place for fear 
the graves would be violated, in accordance with 
the terrible custom of this place. It was a poor 
little cemetery whose soil had been pressed and 
trampled upon in close combat, whose trees were 
shattered and broken by shell. The interments 
took place under Chinese fire, and an old white- 
headed priest — since a martyr, whose head was 
dragged in the gutter — said prayers at the grave, 
in spite of the balls that whistled about him, cutting 
and breaking the branches. 

Toward the end their cemetery was the " con- 
tested region," after they had little by little lost 
much ground, and they trembled for their dead; 
the enemy had advanced to its very border; they 
watched and they killed at close quarters over the 

5 



66 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

sleeping warriors so hastily put to rest. If the 
Chinese had reached this cemetery, and had scaled 
the last frail trenches of sand and gravel in sacks 
made of old curtains, then for all who were left 
there would have been horrible torture to the sound 
of music and laughter, horrible dismemberment, 
— nails torn out, feet torn off, disembowelling, 
and finally the head carried through the streets at 
the end of a pole. 

They were attacked from all sides and in every 
possible manner, often at the most unexpected 
hours of the night. It usually began with cries and 
the sudden noise of trumpets and tam-tams ; around 
them thousands of howling men would appear, — 
one must have heard the bowlings of the Chinese 
to imagine what their voices are; their very timbre 
chills your soul. Gongs outside the walls added to 
the tumult. 

Occasionally, from a suddenly opened hole in a 
neighboring house, a pole twenty or thirty feet 
long, ablaze at the end with oakum and petroleum, 
emerged slowly and silently, like a thing out of 
a dream. This was applied to the roofs in the 
hope of setting them on fire. 

They were also attacked from below, they heard 
dull sounds in the earth, and understood that they 
were being undermined, that their executioners 
might spring up from the ground at any moment ; 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 67 

so that it became necessary, at any cost, to attempt 
to establish countermines to prevent this subterra- 
nean peril. One day, toward noon, two terrible de- 
tonations, which brought on a regular tornado of 
plaster and dust, shook the French legation, half 
burying under rubbish the lieutenant in command 
of the defences and several of his marines. But 
this was not all; all but two succeeded in getting 
clear of the stones and ashes that covered them to 
the shoulders, but two brave sailors never appeared 
again. And so the struggle continued, desperately, 
and under conditions more and more frightful. 

And still the gentle stranger remained, when she 
might so easily have taken shelter elsewhere, — 
at the English legation, for instance, where most 
of the ministers with their families had found 
refuge; the balls did not penetrate to them; they 
were at the centre of the quarter defended by a 
few handfuls of brave soldiers, and could there feel 
a certain security so long as the barricades held 
out. But no, she remained and continued in her 
admirable role at that blazing point, the French 
legation, — a point which was the key, the corner- 
stone of the European quadrangle, whose capture 
would bring about general disaster. 

One time they saw with their field glasses the 
posting of an imperial edict commanding that the 



68 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

fire against foreigners cease. (What they did not 
see was that the men who put up the notices were 
attacked by the crowd with knives. ) Yet a certain 
lull, a sort of armistice did follow; the attacks 
became less violent. 

They saw that incendiaries were everywhere 
abroad; they heard fusillades, cannonades, and 
prolonged cries among the Chinese; entire dis- 
tricts were in flames; they were killing one an- 
other; their fury was fermenting as in a pande- 
monium, and they were suffocated, stifled with 
the smell of corpses. 

Spies came occasionally with information to sell 
— always false and contradictory — in regard to 
the relief expedition, which amid ever-increasing 
anxiety was hourly expected. " It is here, it is 
there, it is advancing," or " It has been defeated 
and is retreating," were the announcements, yet 
it persisted in not appearing. 

What, then, was Europe doing? Had they 
been abandoned? They continued, almost with- 
out hope, to defend themselves in their restricted 
quarters. Each day they felt that Chinese tor- 
ture and death were closing in upon them. 

They began to lack for the essentials of life. 
It was necessary to economize in everything, par- 
ticularly in ammunition; they were growing sav- 
age, — when they captured any Boxers, instead 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 69 

of shooting them they broke their skulls with a 
revolver. 

One day their ears, sharpened for all outside 
noises, distinguished a continued deep, heavy can- 
nonade beyond the great black ramparts whose 
battlements were visible in the distance, and which 
enclosed them in a Dantesque circle; Pekin was 
being bombarded ! It could only be by the armies 
of Europe come to their assistance. 

Yet one last fear troubled their joy. Would not 
a supreme attack against them be attempted, an 
effort be made to destroy them before the allied 
troops could enter? 

As a matter of fact they were furiously at- 
tacked, and this last day, the day of their deliver- 
ance, cost the life of one of our officers, Captain 
Labrousse, who went to join the Austrian com- 
mander in the glorious little cemetery of the lega- 
tion. But they kept up their resistance, until all 
at once not a Chinese head was visible on the bar- 
ricades of the enemy; all was empty and silent in 
the devastation about them; the Boxers were fly- 
ing and the Allies were entering the city ! 

This first night of my arrival in Pekin was as 
melancholy as the nights on the road, but in a 
more commonplace way, with more of ennui. The 
workmen had just finished the walls of my room; 



yo THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

the fresh plaster gave forth a chilHng dampness 
that penetrated to my very bones, and as the room 
was empty, my servant spread my narrow mat- 
tress from the junk upon the floor, and began to 
make a table out of some old boxes. 

My hosts were good enough to have a stove 
hastily set up for me and lighted, which called up 
a picture of European discomfort in some wretched 
place in the country. How could one fancy oneself 
in China, in Pekin itself, so near to mysterious en- 
closures, to palaces so full of wonders? 

As to the French minister, whom I am anxious 
to see, to convey to him the admiral's communica- 
tions, I learn that he, having no roof to cover his 
head, has gone to seek shelter at the Spanish lega- 
tion; and furthermore, that he has typhoid fever, 
which is epidemic on account of the poisonous 
condition of the water, so that for the present no 
one can see him. So my stay in this damp place 
threatens to be more prolonged than I anticipated. 
Through the window-panes covered with moisture 
I gloomily look out onto a court filled with broken 
furniture, where the twilight is falling and the 
snow. 

Who could have foreseen that to-morrow, by 
an unexpected turn of fortune, I should be sleep- 
ing on a great gilded, imperial bed in a strange 
fairyland in the heart of the Forbidden City? 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 71 



VIII 

Friday, October 19. 

I AWAKE benumbed with the damp cold of my 
poor lodging; water drips down the walls and 
the stove smokes. 

I go off to perform a commission entrusted to 
me by the admiral for the commander-in-chief of 
our land troops, General Voyron, who lives in a 
small house near by. In the division of the mys- 
terious Yellow City, made by the heads of the 
allied troops, one of the palaces of the Empress 
fell to our general. He installed himself there 
for the winter, not far from the palace which was 
to be occupied by one of our allies, Field-Marshal 
von Waldersee, and there he has graciously offered 
me hospitality. He himself leaves for Tien-Tsin 
to-day, so for the week or two which his trip will 
occupy I shall be there alone with his aide-de- 
camp, one of my old comrades, who has charge 
of adapting this residence from fairyland to the 
needs of military service. 

What a change it will be from my plastered 
walls and charcoal stove! 

My flight to the Yellow City will not take place 
till to-morrow morning, for my friend, the aide- 
de-camp, expresses his kindly wish to arrive be- 



1' 



THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 



fore me at our palace, where some confusion 
reigns, and to prepare the place for me. 

So, having no further duties to-day, I accept 
the offer of one of the members of the French 
legation to go with him to see the Temple of 
Heaven. It has stopped snowing, the cold north 
wind has chased away the clouds, and the sun is 
shining resplendently in the pale blue sky. 

According to the map of Pekin, this Temple of 
Heaven is five or six kilometres from here, and is 
the largest of all the temples. It seems that it is 
situated in the midst of a park of venerable trees 
surrounded by double walls. Up to the time of 
the war the spot was unapproachable; the em- 
perors came once a year and shut themselves up 
there for a solemn sacrifice, preceded by purifica- 
tions and preparatory rites. 

To reach it we have to go outside of all the 
ashes and ruins, outside of the Tartar City where 
we are staying, through the gigantic gates of the 
terrible walls, and penetrate to the Chinese City 
itself. 

These two walled cities, which together make 
up Pekin, are two immense quadrilaterals placed 
side by side; one, the Tartar City, contains in a 
fortress-like enclosure the Yellow City, where I 
go to-morrow to take up my abode. 

As we come through the separating wall and see 




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ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 73 

the Chinese City framed by the colossal gateway, 
we are surprised to find a great artery, stately and 
full of life as in the old days, running straight 
through Pekin, which up to this time had seemed 
like a necropolis to us; the gold decorations, the 
color, the thousand forms of monsters were all 
unexpected, as well as the sudden aggression of 
noises, of music, and voices. This life, this agita- 
tion, this Chinese splendor, are inconceivable, in- 
explicable to us; such an abyss of dissimilarity 
lies between this world and ours! 

The great artery stretches on before us broad 
and straight, — a road three or four kilometres 
long, leading finally to another monumental gate 
which appears in the distance, surmounted by a 
dungeon with an absurd roof. This is an opening 
through a wall beyond which is the outside soli- 
tude. The low houses which line the street on 
both sides seem to be made of gold lace, from top 
to bottom the open woodwork of their fagades 
glitters ; they are finely carved at the top, all shin- 
ing with gold, with gargoyles similar to our own, 
and rows of gilded dragons. Black stele covered 
with gold letters rise much higher than the houses, 
from which jut out black and gold lacquered plat- 
forms for the support of strange emblems with 
horns and claws and monsters' faces. 

Through the clouds of dust, the gilding, the 



74 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

dragons, and the chimseras glisten in the dusty 
sunlight as far as one can see. Above it all 
triumphal arches of astonishing lightness mount 
heavenward across the avenue; they are airy 
things of carved wood, with supports like the 
masts of a ship, which repeat against the pale 
blue ether more strange hostile forms, horns, 
claws, and fantastic beasts. 

On the broad highway where one treads as 
upon ashes, there is a dull rumbling of caravans 
and horses. The stupendous Mongolian camels, 
brown and woolly, attached to one another in long 
endless files, pass slowly and solemnly along, un- 
ceasingly like the waters of a river, raising as they 
walk the powdery bed which stifles the sounds 
of this entire city. They are going, who knows 
where, into the depths of the Thibetan or Mon- 
golian deserts, carrying in the same indefatigable 
and unconscious way thousands of bales of mer- 
chandise; taking the place of canals and rivers 
which convey barges and junks over immense 
distances. So heavy is the dust raised by their 
feet that they can scarcely lift them; the legs of 
these innumerable camels in procession, as well 
as the lower parts of the houses, and the gar- 
ments of the passers-by, are all vague and con- 
fused in outline, as though seen through the thick 
smoke of a forge, or through a shower of dark 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 75 

wool ; but the backs of the great beasts with their 
shaggy coats, emerging from the soft clouds near 
the earth, are almost sharply defined, and the gold 
of the fagades, tarnished below, shines brightly at 
the height of the extravagant cornices. 

It seems like a phantasmagoric city with no 
real foundations, resting upon a cloud, a heavy 
cloud, whereon gigantic sheep, with necks en- 
larged by a thick brown fleece, move inoffensively. 

Above the dust the sun shines clear and white, 
making resplendent the cold, penetrating light in 
which things stand out incisively. Objects that 
are high up above the ground stand out with abso- 
lute clearness. The smallest of small monsters on 
the top of the triumphal arches may be clearly 
seen, as well as the most delicate carving on the 
summits of the stele ; one can even count the teeth, 
the forked tongues, the squinting eyes of the hun- 
dreds of gold chimseras which jut from the roofs. 

Pekin, the city of carvings and gildings, the 
city of claws and horns, is still capable of creating 
illusions; on dry, sunny, windy days it recovers 
something of its splendor under the dust of the 
steppes, under the veil which then masks the shab- 
biness of its streets and the squalor of its crowds. 

Yet all is old and worn in spite of the gilding 
which still remains bright. In this quarter there 
was continual fighting during the siege of the 



76 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

legations, the Boxers destroying the homes of 
those whom they suspected of sympathy for the 
barbarians. 

The long avenue which we have been following 
for half an hour ends now at an arched bridge of 
white marble, still a superb object; here the houses 
come to an end, and on the opposite bank the 
gloomy steppes begin. 

This was the Bridge of the Beggars, — danger- 
ous inhabitants, who, before the capture of Pekin, 
ranged themselves on both sides of its long rail- 
ing and extorted money from the passers-by ; they 
formed a bold corporation with a king at its head, 
who often went armed. Their place is unoccupied 
to-day ; the vagrants departed after the battles and 
massacres began. 

Beyond this bridge a gray plain, empty and 
desolate, extends for two kilometres, as far as the 
Great Wall, far beyond where Pekin ends. The 
road, with its tide of caravans, goes straight on 
through this solitude to the outside gate. Why 
should this desert be enclosed by the city's walls? 
There is not a trace of previous constructions; it 
must always have been as it is. No one is in sight 
on it; a few stray dogs, a few rags, a few bones, 
and that is all. 

For a long distance into this steppe there are 
sombre red walls at both right and left which 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 77 

seem to enclose great cedar woods. The enclosure 
at the right is that of the Temple of Agriculture; 
at the left is the Temple of Heaven, for which we 
are bound. We plunge into this gloomy region, 
leaving the dust and the crowds behind. 

The enclosure around the Temple of Heaven 
has a circumference of more than six kilometres; 
it is one of the most extensive in the whole 
city, where everything is on an old-time scale of 
grandeur which overpowers us to-day. The gate 
which was formerly impassable will not close now, 
and we enter the wood of venerable trees — cedars, 
arbor-vitse, and willows — through which long 
avenues have been cut. This spot, accustomed to 
silence and respect, is now profaned by barbarian 
cavalry. Several thousand Indians sent out to 
China by England are encamped there; their 
horses have trampled the grass; the turf and the 
moss are filled with rubbish and manure. From 
a marble terrace where incense to the gods was 
formerly burned, clouds of infected smoke were 
rising, the English having chosen this place for 
the burning of cattle that die of the plague, and 
for the manufacture of bone-black. 

There are, as in all sacred woods, two enclos- 
ures. The secondary temples, scattered amongst 
the cedars, precede the great central temple. 

Never having been here before, we are guided 



78 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

by our judgment toward something which must 
be it, higher than anything else, above the tops 
of the trees, — a distant rotunda with a roof of 
blue enamel, surmounted by a gold sphere which 
glistens in the sunshine. 

The rotunda, when we finally reach it, proves 
to be the sanctuary itself. Its approaches are 
silent; there are no more horses or barbarian 
riders. It stands on a high esplanade of white 
marble reached by a series of steps and by an 
** imperial path," reserved for the Son of Heaven, 
who is not permitted to mount stairs. An " im- 
perial path " is an inclined plane, usually an enor- 
mous monolith of marble placed at an easy angle, 
upon which the five-clawed dragon is sculptured 
in bas-relief; the scales of the great heraldic ani- 
mal, its coils and its nails, serve to sustain the 
Emperor's steps and to prevent his feet, dressed 
in silk, from slipping on the strange path reserved 
for Him alone, and which no Chinese would dare 
to tread. 

We mount irreverently by this " imperial path," 
scratching the fine white scales of the dragon with 
our coarse shoes. 

From the top of the lonely terrace, melan- 
choly and everlastingly white with the unchang- 
ing whiteness of marble, one sees above the trees 
of the wood, great Pekin in its dust, which the 




Copyright, 1901, by J. C. hevivient 

The Temple of Heaven 



ON THE WAY TO PEKIN 



79 



sun is beginning to gild as it gilds the tiny even- 
ing clouds. 

The gate of the temple is open, and guarded 
by an Indian trooper with oblong sphynx-like 
eyes, as out of his element as we in this ultra- 
Chinese and sacred environment. He salutes us 
and permits us to enter. 

The circular temple is bright with red and gold 
and has a roof of blue enamel ; it is a new temple 
built to replace a very old one which was burned 
ten years ago. The altar is bare, it is bare every- 
where; plunderers have passed over it, leaving 
nothing but the marble pavements, the beautiful 
lacquered ceilings, and the walls ; the tall columns 
of red lacquer, arranged in the form of a circle, 
all taper uniformly and are decorated with gar- 
lands of gold flowers. 

On the esplanade around it, weeds have pushed 
their way here and there between the carved stones 
of the pavement, attesting the extreme age of the 
marble in spite of its immaculate whiteness. It is 
a commanding place, erected at great expense for 
the contemplation of the sovereigns, and we linger, 
like the Sons of Heaven themselves, to gaze upon it. 

In our immediate vicinity the tops of the arbor- 
vitae and the cedars, — the great wood which en- 
velops us in calm and silence, — come first. Then, 
toward the north is the endless but obscure city, 



8o THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

which seems almost unreal; one divines rather 
than sees it, so hidden is it in the smoke or fog 
which forms a gauzy veil. It might be a mirage 
were it not for the monumental roofs of exagger- 
ated proportions, whose tops of shining enamel 
emerge from the fog here and there, clear and 
real; these are palaces and pagodas. Beyond 
all this, very far away, is the crest of the moun- 
tains of Mongolia, which to-night have no base 
and seem to be cut out of blue and red paper high 
up in the air. Toward the west is the gray steppe 
through which we have come; the slow proces- 
sion of caravans crossing it marks upon it as far 
as the eye can see an uninterrupted brown path; 
we realize that this endless procession goes on 
for hundreds of miles, and that on all the great 
roads of China, to its most distant frontiers, simi- 
lar processions are moving with identical slowness. 
It is the old unchanging method of com- 
munication between these men so different from 
ourselves, — men with perseverance and infinite 
patience, for whom the march of time, which un- 
steadies us, does not exist; it forms for them 
the arterial circulation of this boundless empire, 
where four or five hundred million brains — the 
reverse of our own and forever incomprehensible 
to us — live and speculate. 



IV 

IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 

I 

Saturday, October 20. 

IT snows. The sky is lowering and overcast, 
with no hope of clearing, as though there were 
no longer any sun. A furious north wind is 
blowing, and the black dust whirls and eddies, 
commingling with the snowflakes. 

This morning, my first interview with our min- 
ister took place at the Spanish legation. His tem- 
perature has fallen, but he is still very weak, and 
must remain in bed for some days, so I am obliged 
to postpone until to-morrow or the day after the 
communications I have to make to him. 

I take my last meal with the members of the 
French legation in the chancellor's house, where, 
in default of sumptuous quarters, they have offered 
me the most kindly hospitality. At half-past one 
the two little Chinese chariots arrive, lent me for 
the emigration of myself, my people, and my light 
luggage to the Yellow City. 



82 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

The Chinese chariots are very small, very mas- 
sive, very heavy, and entirely without springs; 
mine has something of the elegance of a hearse; 
the outside is covered with a slaty-gray silk^ with 
a wide border of black velvet. 

We are to journey toward the northwest, in the 
opposite direction from the Chinese City where 
we were yesterday, and from the Temple of 
Heaven. We have five or six kilometres to go 
almost at a walk, on account of the pitiable con- 
dition of the streets and bridges, where most of 
the paving stones are missing. 

These Chinese chariots cannot be closed; they 
are like a simple sentry box mounted on wheels, — 
so to-day we are lashed by the wind, cut by the 
snow, blinded by the dust. 

First come the ruins of the legation district, full 
of soldiers. Then more lonely, almost deserted 
and entirely Chinese ruins — one gray, dusty dev- 
astation, seen vaguely through clouds of black 
and clouds of white. At the gates and on the 
bridges are European or Japanese sentinels, for the 
whole city is under military rule. From time to 
time we meet soldiers and ambulances carrying the 
flag of the Red-Cross Society. 

At last the first enclosure of the Yellow or 
Imperial City is announced by the interpreter of 
the French legation, who has kindly offered to be 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 83 

my guide, and to share my chariot with its funeral 
trappings. I try to look, but the wind burns my 
eyes. 

We are passing with frightful jolts through 
great blood-colored ramparts, not by way of a 
gate, but through a breach made with a mine by 
Indian cavalrymen. 

Pekin, on the farther side of this wall, is some- 
what less injured. In some of the streets the 
houses have kept their outside covering of gilded 
woodwork and their rows of chimseras along the 
edges of the roofs; all this is crumbling and de- 
cayed, it is true, licked by the flames or riddled by 
grape-shot. An evil-looking rabble, dressed in 
sheepskins or blue cotton rags, still swarms in 
some of the houses. 

Another rampart of the same blood red and a 
great gate ornamented with faience through which 
we must pass, — this time it is the real gate of the 
Imperial City, the gate of the region which no one 
was ever allowed to enter ; it is to me as though it 
had been announced as the gate to mystery or to 
an enchanted land. 

We enter, and my surprise is great ; for it is not 
a city, but a wood, — a sombre wood, infested 
with crows which croak in the gray branches. The 
trees are the same as those at the Temple of 
Heaven, — cedars, arbor-vitae, and willows, — old 



84 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

trees all of them, of twisted shapes, unknown 
in our country. Sleet and snow cling to their 
branches, and the inevitable dust in the narrow, 
windy paths engulfs us. 

There are also wooded hills where kiosks of 
faience rise among the cedars; in spite of their 
height, it is plain that they are artificial. Obscured 
by the snow and dust, we can see here and there 
in the distant wood austere old palaces, with enam- 
elled roofs, guarded by horrible marble monsters 
which crouch at the thresholds. 

The whole place is of an incontestable beauty, 
while at the same time it is dismal, unfriendly, 
and disturbing under this sombre sky. 

Now we approach some enormous object which 
we shall soon be alongside of. Is it a fortress, 
a prison, or something more lugubrious still? 
Double ramparts without end, always blood red, 
with gloomy dungeons and a moat thirty metres 
wide, full of water-lilies and dying roses. This 
is the Violet City, enclosed in the heart of the im- 
penetrable Imperial City, and more impenetrable 
still. It is the residence of the Invisible, of the 
Son of Heaven — God ! but the place is gloomy, 
hostile, savage, beneath this sombre sky! 

We continue to advance under the old trees into 
what seems the park of death. 

These dumb, closed palaces, seen first on one 



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IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 85 

side, then on the other, are the Temple of the God 
of the Clouds, the Temple of Imperial Longevity, 
or the Temple of the Benediction of Sacred Moun- 
tains. Their names, inconceivable to us, the names 
of an Asiatic dream, make them still more unreal. 

My companion assures me that this Yellow City 
is not always so terrible as it is to-day; for this 
weather is exceptional in a Chinese autumn, which 
is usually magnificently luminous. He promises 
me afternoons of warm sunshine in this wood, 
unique in all the world, where I shall make my 
home for several days. 

" Now look," he said, " look ! This is the Lake 
of the Lotus, and that is the Marble Bridge." 

The Lake of the Lotus and the Marble Bridge! 
These two names have long been known to me as 
the names of things which could not he seen, but 
of things whose reputations had crossed insur- 
mountable walls. They call up images of light 
and intense color, and are a surprise to me here 
in this mournful desert, in this icy wind. 

The Lake of the Lotus! I had pictured it as 
sung by the Chinese poets, of an exquisite limpidity 
with great calices open to an abundance of water, 
a sort of aquatic plain covered with pink flowers, 
pink from one end to the other. And this is it! 
— This slime and this gloomy swamp, covered 
with dead leaves turned brown by the frost! It 



86 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

is infinitely larger than I supposed, this lake made 
by the hand of man; it goes on and on toward 
nostalgic shores, where ancient pagodas appear 
among the old trees, under the gray sky. 

The Marble Bridge ! Yes, this long, white arch 
supported by a series of white pillars, this exceed- 
ingly graceful curve, the balustrades with mon- 
sters' heads, — this all corresponds to the idea I 
had of it; it is very sumptuous and very Chinese. 
I had not, however, foreseen the two dead bodies 
decaying in their robes, which lay among the reeds 
at the entrance to the bridge. 

The large dead leaves on the lake are really 
lotus-leaves; I recognize them now that I see 
them near at hand, and remember to have seen 
similar ones — but oh, so green and fresh — on 
the ponds of Nagasaki or of Yeddo. And there 
once must have been here the effect of an uninter- 
rupted covering of pink blossoms; their fading 
stems rise now by thousands above the slime. 

They will undoubtedly die, these fields of lotus, 
which for centuries have charmed the eyes of the 
emperors, for the lake is almost empty; it is the 
Allies who have turned its water into the canal 
that connects Pekin with the river, in order to 
re-establish this route which the Chinese had dried 
up for fear of its serving the purpose of the 
invaders. 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 87 

The Marble Bridge, white and solitary, leads 
us across to the other bank of the lake, very nar- 
row at this point, and there I shall find the Palace 
of the North, which is to be my residence. At first 
I do not see that there are enclosures within en- 
closures, all with great gates, dilapidated and in 
ruins. A dull light falls from the wintry sky 
through opaque clouds that are filled with snow. 

In the centre of a gray wall there is a breach 
where an African chasseur is on guard; on one 
side lies a dead dog, on the other a pile of rags 
and filth breathing a corpse-like odor. This, it 
appears, is the entrance to my palace. 

We are black with dust, powdered with snow, 
and our teeth are chattering with cold, when we 
finally get down from our chariot in a court en- 
cumbered with debris, where my comrade. Cap- 
tain C, the aide-de-camp, comes to meet me. 
With an approach like this, one well might won- 
der if the promised palace were not chimerical. 

Just back of this court there is, however, the first 
appearance of magnificence. Here and there is a 
long gallery of glass, light, elegant, and appar-. 
ently intact, amid so much destruction. Through 
the panes one has glimpses of gold, porcelains, and 
imperial silks with designs of dragons and clouds. 
This is one corner of the palace, completely hidden 
until you are right upon it, 



88 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

Oh, our evening meal on the night of our 
arrival in this strange dwelling! It is almost 
totally dark. At an ebony table my companion and 
I are seated, wrapped in our military cloaks 
with collars turned up, our teeth chattering with 
cold, and are served by our orderlies with trem- 
bling limbs. A feeble little Chinese candle of red 
wax, stuck in a bottle, — a candle picked up in the 
debris from some ancestral altar, — sheds a dim 
light, blown as it is by the wind. Our plates, in 
fact all the dishes, are of porcelain of inestimable 
value, — imperial yellow, marked with the cipher 
of a fastidious emperor, who was a contemporary 
of Louis XV. But our wine and our muddy water 
— boiled and reboiled for fear of poison in the 
wells — are in horrible old bottles with bits of 
potato, cut into shape by the soldiers, for corks. 

The gallery where this scene takes place is very 
long; the distance is lost in obscurity where the 
splendors of an Asiatic tale are dimly perceived. 
Its sides are of glass up to the height of a man, 
and this frail wall is all that separates us from the 
sinister darkness which surrounds us; one has a 
feeling that the wandering forms outside, the 
phantoms attracted by our small light, may from 
a distance see us at table, and this is disturbing. 
Above the glass there is a series of light frames 
containing rice-paper, which reach to the ceiling. 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 89 

from which marvellous ebony sculptures depend, 
delicate as lacework; this rice-paper is torn, and 
allows the mortally cold night wind to strike us. 
Our frozen feet rest on imperial yellow carpets 
of the finest wool, with the five-horned dragons 
sprawling upon them. Close to us gigantic in- 
cense-burners of cloisonne of the old inimitable 
blue, with gold elephants as pedestals, are softly 
burning; there are magnificent and fanciful 
screens; phoenixes of enamel spread their long 
wings; thrones, monsters, things without age and 
without price abound. And there we are, inele- 
gant, dusty, worn, soiled, with the air of coarse 
barbarians, installed like intruders in fairyland. 

What must this gallery have been scarcely three 
months ago, when instead of silence and death 
there was life, music, and flowers; when a crowd 
of courtiers and servants in silken robes peopled 
these approaches so empty and ruined to-day; 
when the Empress, followed by the ladies of the 
palace, passed by dressed like goddesses! 

Having finished our supper, which consisted of 
the regular army ration, having finished drinking 
our tea out of museum-like porcelain, now for the 
hour of smoking and conversation. No, we try in 
vain to think it amusing to be here, in this un- 
foreseen and half fantastic way. It is too cold; 
the wind chills us to the marrow. We do not 



90 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

enjoy anything. We prefer to go ofif and to try 
to sleep. 

My comrade, Captain C, who has taken pos- 
session of the place, leads me with a lantern and 
a few followers to the apartment set aside for me. 
It is on the res-de-chausee, of course ; there are no 
real stories in Chinese houses. As in the gallery, 
from which we come, there is nothing between me 
and the night outside but a few panes of glass, 
very light shades of white silk, and windows of 
rice-paper torn from one end to the other. As 
to the door, which is made of one great pane of 
glass, I fasten it with a cord, since there is no 
lock. 

There are some admirable yellow rugs on the 
floor, thick as cushions. I have a big imperial bed 
of carved ebony, and my mattress and pillows are 
covered with precious silk embroidered in gold, 
but there are no sheets, although I have a soldier's 
gray woollen blanket. 

To-morrow my companion tells me I may go 
and select from her Majesty's reserve supply what- 
ever I wish in the way of further decorations for 
this room, as it can do no one any harm to move 
things about. 

Assuring me that the gates of the outer enclos- 
ure, as well as the breach by which I entered, are 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 91 

guarded by sentinels, he retires with his orderhes 
to the other end of the palace. 

Dressed, and with my boots on, I stretch myself 
out on the beautiful silk cushions, adding to my 
gray blanket an old sheepskin and two or three 
imperial robes embroidered with gold chimseras. 
My two servants arrange themselves in like man- 
ner on the floor. Before blowing out the red 
candle from some ancestral altar, I am constrained 
to admit in my secret soul that the accusation that 
we are " Occidental barbarians " has been com- 
pletely confirmed since supper. 

The wind has tormented and torn all that was 
left of the rice-paper in my panes ; above me there 
is a perpetual sound like the movement of the 
wings of nocturnal birds or the flight of bats. 
I distinguish occasionally, although half asleep, a 
short fusillade or an isolated cry in the distance. 



II 

Sunday, October 21. 

Cold, darkness, death, all that oppressed us last 
night, has disappeared with the morning light. 
The sun shines warm as a summer sun. The 
somewhat disordered Chinese magnificence which 
surrounds us is bright with the light of the 
East. 



92 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

It is amusing to go on a voyage of discovery 
over this almost hidden palace, which lurks in 
a low spot, behind walls, under trees, looking 
quite insignificant as you approach it, but is, to- 
gether with its dependencies, almost as large as a 
city. 

It is made up of long galleries enclosed on all 
sides in glass ; the light framework, the verandahs, 
the small columns, are painted on the outside a 
greenish bronze decorated with pink water-lilies. 

One has the feeling that it was built according 
to the fancies of a woman ; it even seems as though 
the splendid old Empress had left in it, along with 
her bibelots, a touch of her superannuated yet still 
charming grace. 

The galleries cross one another at right angles, 
forming courts at the junctures, like little cloisters. 
They are filled with objects of art, which can be 
equally well seen from without, for the entire 
palace is transparent from one end to the other. 
There is nothing to protect all this glass even at 
night; the place was enclosed by so many walls 
and seemed so inviolable that no other precau- 
tion was deemed necessary. 

Within, the architectural elegance consists of 
arches of rare wood, crossing at frequent in- 
tervals; they are made of enormous beams so 
carved, so leafy, so open, that they seem like 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 93 

lace, or, rather, like bowers of dark leaves that 
form a perspective comparable to the lanes in old 
parks. 

The wing which we occupy must have been the 
wing of honor. The farther away from it one 
goes in the direction of the woods where the palace 
ends, the more simple does the decoration become. 
At one end are the lodgings of the mandarins, the 
stewards, the gardeners, the domestics, all hur- 
riedly abandoned and full of unfamiliar objects, 
household utensils or those used in worship, cere- 
monial hats and court liveries. 

Then comes an enclosed garden which is entered 
by an elaborately carved marble gate. Here one 
finds small fountains, pretentious and curious 
rockwork, and rows of vases containing plants 
which have died from lack of water or from cold. 
Further on there is an orchard where figs, grapes, 
eggplant, pumpkins, and gourds were cultivated, 
— gourds especially, for in China they are em- 
blems of happiness, and it was the custom of the 
Empress to offer one with her own white hands to 
each of the dignitaries who came to pay his court 
to her in exchange for the magnificent presents 
he brought her. There are also small pavilions 
for the cultivation of silkworms and little kiosks 
for storing edible grains; each kind was kept in 



94 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

a porcelain jar decorated with imperial dragons, 
worthy of a place in a museum. 

The parks of this artificial little landscape end 
in the brush, where they lose themselves under the 
leafless trees of the wood where to-day the crows 
and the magpies are enjoying, the beautiful autumn 
sun. It seems that when the Empress gave up the 
regency — and we know by what an audacious 
manoeuvre she so quickly managed to take it up 
again — it was her caprice to construct a bit of 
the country here in the heart of Pekin, in the very 
centre of this immense human ant-hill. 

The most surprising thing in all this enclosure 
is a Gothic church with two granite bell-towers, a 
parsonage, and a school, — all built in other days 
by the missionaries and all of enormous size. But 
in order to create this palace it was necessary to 
enlarge the limits of the Imperial City and to 
include in them this Christian territory; so the 
Empress gave the Lazarist Fathers more land and 
a more beautiful church, erected at her own ex- 
pense, where the missionaries and several thousand 
converts endured all last summer the horrors of a 
four-months' siege. 

Like the systematic woman that she was, her 
Majesty utilized the church and its dependencies 
for storing her reserves of all sorts, packed in 
innumerable boxes. One could not imagine with- 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 95 

out having seen them what an accumulation there 
could be of the strange, the marvellous, and the 
preposterous in the reserve stock of bibelots be- 
longing to an Empress of China. 

The Japanese were the first to forage there, 
then came the Cossacks, and, lastly, the Germans, 
who left the place to us. At present the church is 
in indescribable disorder, — boxes opened, their 
precious contents scattered outside in rubbish 
heaps ; there are streams of broken china, cascades 
of enamel, ivory, and porcelain. 

In the long glass galleries a similar state of 
things exists. My comrade, who is charged with 
straightening out the chaos and making an in- 
ventory, reminds me of that person who was shut 
up by an evil spirit in a chamber filled with the 
feathers of all the birds of the woods and com- 
pelled to sort them by species ; those of the finch, 
the linnet, the bullfinch together. However, he 
has already set about his difficult task, and with 
Chinese workmen, under the direction of a few 
marines and some African chasseurs, has already 
begun to clear things away. 

Five metres from here, on the opposite shores 
of the Lake of the Lotus, as I was retracing my 
steps last night, I found a second palace which 
once belonged to the Empress, which is now ours 



96 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

also. In this palace, which no one is occupying 
at the moment, I am authorized to set up my 
work-room for a few days, so that I may have 
quiet and isolation. 

It is called the Rotunda Palace. Exactly oppo- 
site the Marble Bridge, it resembles a circular 
fortress, on which have been placed small mira- 
dors, — little, fairy-like castles, — ■ and the single 
low entrance is guarded day and night by sol- 
diers, whose orders are to admit no one. 

When you have crossed the threshold of this 
citadel, and the guards have closed the door after 
you, you penetrate into the most exquisite soli- 
tude. An inclined plane leads you to a vast es- 
planade about twelve metres above the ground, 
where the miradors — the little kiosks — seen 
from below stand; there is a garden with old, 
old trees, a labyrinth of rocks, and a large pagoda 
shining with gold and enamel. 

From here there is a commanding view of the 
palace and its park. On one side the Lake of the 
Lotus is spread out; on the other, one has a 
bird's-eye view of the Violet City, showing the 
almost endless succession of high imperial roofs, 
— a world of roofs, a world of enamel shining in 
the sunshine, a world of horns, claws, and mon- 
sters on gable and tiling. 

I walk in the solitude of this high place, in the 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 97 

shade of the old trees, trying to understand the 
arrangement of the house and to choose a study 
to my fancy. 

In the centre of the esplanade is the magnificent 
pagoda which was struck by a shell and which is 
still in battle disarray. Its presiding divinity — 
a white goddess, who was the Palladium of the 
Chinese empire, an alabaster goddess with a gold 
dress embroidered with precious stones — medi- 
tates with downcast eyes, sweet, calm, and smil- 
ing, in the midst of the destruction of her sacred 
vases, of her incense-burners anjl her flowers. 

One large gloomy room has kept its furnish- 
ings intact, — an admirable ebony throne, some 
screens, seats of all shapes, and cushions of heavy 
yellow imperial silk, brocaded with a cloud effect. 

Among all the silent kiosks the one which I fix 
upon as my choice is at the very edge of the es- 
planade on the crest of the surrounding wall, over- 
looking the Lake of the Lotus and the Marble 
Bridge, and commanding a view of the whole 
factitious landscape, — created out of gold ingots 
and human lives to please the weary eyes of 
emperors. 

It is hardly larger than a ship's cabin, but its 
sides are made of glass extending to the roof, so 
that I shall be kept warm until nightfall by the 
autumn sun, which here in China is seldom over- 

7 



98 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

clouded. I have a table and two ebony chairs 
with yellow silk coverings brought in from the 
adjoining room, — and thus installed, I descend 
again to the Marble Bridge and return to the 
Palace of the North, where Captain C, my com- 
panion in this Chinese dream, is waiting break- 
fast for me. 

I arrive in time to see, before they are burned, 
the curious discoveries of the morning, — the deco- 
rations, emblems, and accessories of the Chinese 
Imperial Theatre. They were cumbersome, frail 
things, intended to serve but for a night or two, 
and then forgotten for an indefinite time in a 
room that was never opened, and which they are 
now clearing out and cleaning for a hospital for 
our sick and wounded. Mythological representa- 
tions were evidently given at this theatre, the 
scene taking place either in hell or with the gods 
in the clouds; and such a collection as there was 
of monsters, chimseras, wild beasts, and devils, 
in cardboard or paper, mounted on carcasses made 
of bamboo or whalebone, all devised with a per- 
fect genius for the horrible, with an imagination 
surpassing the limits of a nightmare ! 

The rats, the dampness, and the ants have 
caused irremediable havoc among them, so it has 
been decided to burn all these figures that have 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 99 

served to amuse or to trouble the dreams of the 
drowsy, dissipated, feeble young Emperor. 

Our soldiers are hurrying amid joy and laugh- 
ter to carry all these things out of doors. Here 
in the morning sunlight of the courtyard are 
apocalyptic beasts and life-sized elephants that 
weigh nothing at all, and which one man can 
make walk or run. They kick them, they jump 
upon them, they jump into them, they walk 
through them and reduce them to nothing; then 
at last they light the gay torch, which in the 
twinkling of an eye consumes them. 

Other soldiers have been working all the morn- 
ing pasting rice-paper into the sashes of our palace 
so that the wind shall not enter. As for artificial 
heat, it comes up from below, Chinese fashion, 
from subterranean furnaces which are arranged 
under the rooms, and which we shall light this 
evening as soon as the chill comes on. For the 
moment the splendid sunshine suffices; so much 
glass in the galleries, where the silks, enamels, 
and gold glisten, gives us the heat of a green- 
house, and on this occasion we take our meal, 
which is always served on the Emperor's china, 
in an illusion of summer. 

The sky of Pekin is subject to excessive and 
sudden variations of which we with our regular 

L.ofC, 



loo THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

climate can form no conception. Toward the 
middle of the day, when I find myself out of 
doors again under the cedars of the Yellow City, 
the sun has suddenly disappeared behind some 
leaden clouds which seem heavy with snow; the 
Mongolian wind begins to blow, bitter cold, as it 
was yesterday, and again a northern winter fol- 
lows with no transition stage a few hours of the 
radiant weather of the Midi. 

I have an arrangement to meet the members of 
the French legation in the woods, to explore with 
them the sepulchral Violet City, which is the 
centre, the heart, the mystery of China, the veri- 
table abode of the Son of Heaven, the enormous 
Sardanapalian citadel, in comparison with which 
all the small modern palaces in the Imperial City 
where we are living seem but children's playthings. 

Even since the flight it has not been easy to 
enter the Violet City with its yellow enamelled 
roofs. Behind the double walls, mandarins and 
eunuchs still dwell in this home of magnificence 
and oppression, and it is said that a few women, 
hidden princesses, and treasures still remain. The 
two gates are guarded by severe sentries, — the 
north gate by the Japanese, the south by 
Americans. 

It is by the first of these two entrances that we 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY loi 

are authorized to pass to-day, and the group of 
small Japanese soldiers that we find there smile 
upon us in welcome ; but the austere gate — dark 
red with gilded locks and hinges, representing the 
heads of monsters — is closed from within and 
resists their efforts. The use of centuries has 
warped the enormous doors so that through the 
crack one can see boards fastened on to the inside 
to prevent their opening, and persons running 
about announcing in flute-like voices that they 
have received no orders. 

We threaten to burn the doors, to climb over 
them, to shoot through the opening; all sorts of 
things which we have no intention of doing, but 
which frighten the eunuchs and put them to flight. 

No one is left to answer us. What are we to 
do? We are freezing our feet by this cold wall; 
the moat, full of dead reeds, exhales dampness, 
and the wind continues to blow. 

The kindly Japanese, however, send some of 
their strongest men — who depart on a keen run 
— to the other gate, some four kilometres around. 
They light a fire for us out of cedar branches and 
painted woodwork, where we take turns warming 
our hands while we wait; we amuse ourselves by 
picking up here and there old feathered arrows 
thrown by prince or emperor from the top of the 



I02 THE LAST DAYS OF JPEKIN 

walls. After an hour's patient waiting, noise and 
voices are heard behind the silent gate; it is our 
envoy inside cuffing the eunuchs. 

Suddenly the boards creak and fall and the 
doors open wide before us. 



Ill 

THE ABANDONED ROOM 

There is a faint odor of tea in the dark room, 
an odor of I know not what beside, — of dried 
flowers and old silks. 

There is no way of getting more light in this 
curious room, which opens into a big gloomy 
salon, for its windows receive only half-light be- 
cause of the rice paper in all the panes ; they open 
onto a yard that is no doubt surrounded by triple 
walls. The alcove-bed, large and low, which 
seems to be set into an inner wall thick as a 
rampart, has silk curtains and a cover of dark 
blue, — the color of the sky at night. There are 
no seats, indeed there would scarcely be room for 
any; neither are there any books, nor could one 
very well see to read. On the dark wooden chests 
which serve as tables, stand melancholy bibelots in 
glass cases; small vases of bronze or of jade con- 
taining very stiff artificial bouquets, with petals 







< 

O 



U 

z 

< 

a: 

u. 
z 
W 

>-) 



o 

H 



h 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 103 

made of mother-of-pearl and ivory. A thick layer 
of dust over everything shows that the room is 
not occupied. 

At first sight there is nothing to mark the place 
or the time, — unless, possibly, the fineness of the 
ebony carving of the upper part of the bed reveals 
the patience of the Chinese. Everything is sombre 
and gloomy, with straight, austere lines. 

Where are we, then, in what obscure, closed, 
clandestine dwelling? 

Has some one lived here in our time or was it 
in the distant past? 

How many hours — or how many centuries — 
has he been gone, and who could he have been, 
the occupant of the abandoned room? 

Some sad dreamer evidently, to have chosen 
this shadowy retreat; some one very refined, to 
have left behind him this distinguished fragrance, 
and very weary, to have been pleased with this 
dull simplicity and this eternal twilight. 

One feels stifled by the smallness of the win- 
dows, whose panes are veiled with silky paper, 
and which never can be opened to admit light or 
air because they are sealed into the wall. And 
besides, you recall the weary way you must take 
to get here, and the obstacles you encounter, and 
that disturbs you. 

First, there is the big black Babylonian wall. 



I04 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

the superhuman ramparts of a city more than ten 
leagues around, which to-day is a mass of ruins, 
half empty, and strewn with corpses; then a 
second wall, painted blood-red, which forms a 
second city enclosed in the first. Then a third 
wall, more magnificent still, and also the color of 
blood; this is the wall that surrounds the great 
mysteries of the place, and before the days of 
the war and the fall of the city no European had 
ever gone beyond it; to-day we were detained 
for more than an hour, in spite of passes, signed 
and countersigned; through the keyhole of a 
great gate guarded by soldiers and barricaded 
from within, we were compelled to threaten and 
argue at length with the guards inside, who sought 
to hide and to escape. These gates once opened, 
another wall appeared, separated from the former 
one by a road going all the way around the en- 
closure; here tattered garments were scattered 
about, and dogs were playing with the bones of 
the dead. This wall was of the same red, but still 
more splendid, and was crowmed along its entire 
length by a horned ornamentation and by mon- 
sters made of a golden yellow faience. When we 
had finally passed this third wall, queer old beard- 
less persons came to meet us with distrustful greet- 
ings, and guided us through a maze of little courts 
and small gardens, walled and walled again, in 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 105 

which old trees were growing amongst rock-work 
and jars. All of it was separate, concealed, dis- 
tressing; all of it protected and peopled by mon- 
sters and chimaeras in bronze or marble, by a 
thousand faces, whose grimaces signified ferocity 
and hatred, by a thousand unknown symbols. 
And every time each gate in the red walls with 
the yellow faience tops closed behind us, as in 
horrible dreams the doors of a series of passage- 
ways close upon one, nevermore to permit one to 
go out. 

Now, after our long journey which seems like 
a nightmare, we feel, as we look at the. anxious 
group who have conducted us, walking noiselessly 
on their paper soles, that we have committed some 
supreme and unheard-of profanation in their eyes, 
in penetrating to this modest room; they stand 
there in the doorway, peering obliquely at our 
every gesture; the crafty eunuchs in silken robes, 
and the thin mandarins, wearing along with the 
red button of their headdresses, the melancholy 
raven's quill. They were compelled to yield, they 
did not wish to; they tried by every ruse to lead 
us to some other part of the immense labyrinth of 
this palace of Heliogabalus ; to interest us in the 
luxurious salons farther on, in the great courts, 
and in the marble balconies, which we shall see 
later; in a whole Versailles some distance farther 



io6 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

on, now overgrown by weeds, and where no sound 
is heard but the song of the crows. 

They were determined we should not come here, 
and it was by observing the dilation of the pupils 
of their frightened eyes that we guessed which 
way to go. 

Who lived here, then, sequestered behind so 
many walls, — walls more terrible by far than 
those of our western prisons? Who could he 
have been, the man who slept in this bed under 
these silken covers of nocturnal blue, and in his 
times of revery, at nightfall or at dawn, on glacial 
winter days, was obliged to contemplate these pen- 
sive little bouquets under glass, ranged so sym- 
metrically along the black chests? 

It was he, the invisible Emperor, Son of 
Heaven, childish and feeble; he whose empire 
is vaster than all Europe, and who reigns like a 
vague phantom over four or five hundred millions 
of subjects. 

It is the same person in whose veins the vigor 
of half-deified ancestors is exhausted, who has too 
long remained inactive, concealed in this palace 
more sacred than a temple ; the same who neglects 
and envelops in twilight the diminishing place 
where he is pleased to live. The immense setting 
in which former emperors lived frightens him and 
he abandons it all; grass and brushwood grow 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 107 

on the majestic marble railings and in the grand 
courtyards; crows and pigeons by the hundreds 
make their nests in the gilded vaults of the throne 
room, covering with dirt and dung the rich and 
curious rugs left there to be ruined. This invio- 
lable palace, a league in circumference, which no 
foreigner has ever seen, of which one can learn 
nothing, guess nothing, has in store for Euro- 
peans who enter it for the first time the surprise 
of mournful dilapidation and the silence of a tomb. 

The pale Emperor never occupied the throne 
rooms. No, what suited him was the quarter 
where the small gardens were, and the enclosed 
yards, the quaint quarter where the eunuchs tried 
to prevent our going. The alcove-bed in its deep 
recess, with its curtains like the blue of night, in- 
dicates fear. 

The small private apartments behind this 
gloomy chamber extend like subterranean pas- 
sages into still deeper shadows; ebony is the pre- 
vailing wood; everything is intentionally sombre, 
even the mournful mummified bouquets under 
their glass cases. There is a soft-toned piano 
which the young Emperor was learning to play, 
in spite of his long, brittle nails; a harmonium, 
and a big music-box that gives Chinese airs with 
a tone that seems to come from beneath the waters 
of a lake. 



io8 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

Beyond this comes what was doubtless his most 
cherished retreat, — it is narrow and low like the 
cabin of a ship, and exhales the fine odor of tea 
and dried rose-leaves. 

There, in front of a small airhole covered with 
rice paper, through which filters a little sombre 
light, lies a mattress, covered with imperial golden- 
yellow silk, which seems to retain the imprint of 
a body habitually extended upon it. A few books, 
a few private papers, are scattered about. Fas- 
tened to the wall are two or three unimportant 
pictures, not even framed, representing colorless 
roses, and written in Chinese characters under- 
neath are the last orders of the physician for this 
chronic invalid. 

What was the real character of this dreamer, 
who shall ever say? What distorted views of 
life had been bequeathed to him of the things of. 
this world and of the world beyond? What do 
all these gruesome symbols signify to him? The 
emperors, the demigods, from whom he descends, 
made old Asia tremble ; tributary sovereigns came 
from great distances to prostrate themselves, fill- 
ing this place with banners and processions more 
magnificent than our imaginations can picture; 
within these same walls, so silent to-day, how and 
under what passing phantasmagoric aspects did 
he retain the stamp of the wonderful past? 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 109 

And what confusion must have entered his un- 
fathomable Httle brain when the unprecedented act 
was accomphshed, and events occurred which he 
never in his wildest fears could have anticipated! 
His palace, with its triple walls, violated to its 
most secret recesses; he, the Son of Heaven, torn 
from the dwelling where twenty generations of 
his ancestors had lived inaccessible; obliged to 
flee, and in his flight to permit himself to be 
seen, to act in the light of day like other men, 
perhaps even to implore and to wait! 

Just as we are leaving the abandoned room 
our orderlies, who purposely remained behind, 
laughingly throw themselves on the bed with the 
nocturnal blue curtains, and I hear one of them 
remark gaily in an aside and with a Gascon ac- 
cent : " Now, old fellow, we can say that we have 
lain on the bed of the Emperor of China." 



IV 

Monday, October 22. 

Chinese workmen, — amongst whom we are 
warned that there are spies and Boxers, — who 
look after the fires in the two furnaces in our 
palace, have kept us almost too warm all night. 
When we get up there is, as there was yesterday, 



no THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

another illusion of summer on our light verandah 
with the green columns painted with pink lotus 
flowers. An almost burning sun is rising and 
shining upon the ghostly pilgrimage which I am 
about to make on horseback, toward the west, out- 
side the Tartar City, and through the ashy, silent, 
ruined suburbs. 

In this direction there were, scattered through 
the dusty country, Christian cemeteries which even 
in i860 had never been violated by the yellow 
race. But this time they furiously attacked the 
dead, and left chaos and abomination behind them. 
The oldest remains, those of missionaries who had 
been sleeping there for three centuries, were dis- 
interred, crushed, piled up and set on fire in order 
to destroy, according to Chinese beliefs, whatever 
might still be left of their souls. One must be 
somewhat acquainted with the ideas of the country 
in order to understand the enormity of this su- 
preme insult to all our Occidental races. 

The cemetery of the Jesuit Fathers was singu- 
larly splendid. They were formerly very powerful 
with the Celestial Emperors, and borrowed for 
their own tombs the funereal emblems of the princes 
of China. The ground is literally strewn now 
with big marble dragons and tortoises, and with 
tall stele with chimaeras coiled about them; all 
these carvings have been thrown down and 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY iii 

smashed; the heavy stones of the vaults have 
been broken also, and the ground thoroughly 
overturned. 

A more modest enclosure, not far away, has 
for a long time been the burial-place for the Euro- 
pean legations. It has undergone the same treat- 
ment as the beautiful cemetery of the Jesuits. The 
Chinese have ransacked the graves, destroyed the 
bodies, and even violated the coffins of little chil- 
dren. Some few human bones are still lying on 
the ground, while the crosses that marked the 
graves are placed upside down. It is one of the 
most poignantly affecting sights that ever met my 
eyes. 

Some good Sisters who lived near by kept a 
school for Chinese children; of their houses 
nothing is left but a pile of bricks and ashes, even 
the trees have been uprooted and stuck back in the 
ground head foremost. 

This is their story : — 

They were alone one night when about a thou- 
sand Boxers came along, shouting their death cries 
and playing gongs. The Sisters began to pray in 
their chapel as they awaited death. However, the 
noise died away, and when day broke no one was 
in sight, so they escaped to Pekin and took shel- 
ter with the bishop, taking their frightened little 
pupils with them. When the Boxers were asked 



112 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

later why they had not entered and killed the 
Sisters, they replied : " Because we saw soldiers' 
heads and guns all around the convent walls." So 
the Sisters owed their lives to this hallucination 
of their executioners. 

The wells in the deserted gardens fill the air 
to-day with odors of the dead. There were three 
large cisterns which furnished a water so pure 
that they sent all the way from the legations to get 
it. The Boxers filled these wells up to the brim 
with the mutilated bodies of little boys from the 
Brothers' school and from Christian families in 
the neighborhood. Dogs came to eat from the 
horrible pile which came up to the level of the 
ground; but they had their fill, and so the bodies 
were left, and have been so preserved by the cold 
and dryness that the marks of torture upon them 
may still be seen. One poor thigh has been slashed 
in stripes after the manner in which bakers some- 
times mark their loaves of bread, another poor 
hand is without nails. And here is a woman from 
whom one of the private parts of her body has 
been cut and placed in her mouth, where it was left 
by the dogs between her gaping jaws. The bodies 
are covered with what looks like salt, but which 
proves to be white frost, which in shady places 
never melts here. Yet there is enough clear, im- 
placable sunshine to bring out the emaciation and 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 113 

to exaggerate the horrors of the open mouths, their 
agonized expressions, and the rigidity of the an- 
guished positions of the dead. 

There is not a cloud to-day, but a pale sky which 
reflects a great deal of light. All winter, it seems, 
it is much the same; even in the coldest weather 
rains and snows are very exceptional in Pekin. 

After our brief soldiers' breakfast, served on 
rare china in the long gallery, I leave the Palace 
of the North to install myself in the kiosk on the 
opposite shore, which I selected yesterday, and to 
begin my work. It is about two o'clock; a sum- 
mer's sun shines on my solitary path, on the white- 
ness of the Marble Bridge, on the mud of the 
Lake, and on the bodies that sleep amongst the 
frosted lotus leaves. 

The guards at the entrance to the Rotunda 
Palace open and close behind me the red lacquered 
doors. I mount the inclined plane leading to the 
esplanade, and here I am alone, much alone, in the 
silence of my lofty garden and my strange palace. 

In order to reach my work-room, I have to go 
along narrow passageways between old trees and 
the most unnatural rockwork. The kiosk is 
flooded with light, the beautiful sunshine falls on 
my table and on my black seats with their cushions 
of golden yellow; the beautiful melancholy Oc- 
tober sunshine illumines and warms my chosen 

8 



114 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

retreat, where the Empress, it seems, loved to 
come and sit and watch from this high point her 
lake all pink with flowers. 

The last butterflies and the last wasps, their 
lives prolonged by this hot-house warmth, beat 
their wings against the window-panes. The great 
imperial lake is spread out before us, spanned by 
the Marble Bridge; venerable trees form a girdle 
around shores out of which rise the fanciful roofs 
of palaces and pagodas, — roofs that are one mar- 
vellous mass of faience. As in the landscapes 
painted on Chinese fans, there are groups of tiny 
rocks in the foreground, and small enamelled mon- 
sters from a neighboring kiosk, while in the middle 
distance there are knotted branches which have 
fallen from some old cedar. 

I am alone, entirely and deliciously alone, high 
up in an inaccessible spot whose approaches are 
guarded by sentinels. There is the occasional cry 
of a crow or the gallop of a horse down below, at 
the foot of the rampart whereon my frail habita- 
tion rests, or the passing of an occasional mes- 
senger. Otherwise nothing; not a single sound 
near enough to trouble the sunny quiet of my 
retreat No surprise is possible, no visitor. 

I have been working for an hour, when a light 
rustling behind me from the direction of the en- 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 115 

trance gives me the feeling of some discreet and 
agreeable presence. I turn round, and there is a 
cat who has stopped short with one foot in the air, 
hesitating and looking me straight in the eye, as 
if to ask : " Who are you, and what are you doing 
here?" 

I call him quietly, he replies with a plaintive 
miaul ; and I, always tactful with cats, go on with 
my writing, knowing very well that in a first inter- 
view one must not be too insistent. 

He is a very pretty cat, yellow and white, 
with the distinguished and elegant air of a grand 
seignior. A moment later and he is rubbing against 
my leg ; so then I put my hand slowly down on the 
small, velvety head, which, after a sudden start, 
permits my caresses and abandons itself to them. 
It is over; the acquaintance is made. He is evi- 
dently a cat accustomed to petting, probably an 
intimate of the Empress. To-morrow and every 
day I shall beg my orderly to bring him a cold 
luncheon from my rations. 

The illusion of summer ends with the day. The 
sun sets big and red behind the Lake of the 
Lotus, all at once taking on a sad, wintry look ; at 
the same time a chill comes over all things, and 
the empty palace grows suddenly gloomy. For the 
first time that day I hear footsteps approaching, 



ii6 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

resounding in the silence on the pavement of the 
esplanade. My servants, Osman and Renaud, are 
coming for me according to instructions ; they are 
the only human beings for whom the gate of the 
walls below has orders to open. 

It is icy cold as we cross the Marble Bridge in 
the twilight to return to our home, and the mois- 
ture is gathering in clouds over the lake, as it does 
every night. 

After supper we go on a man hunt in the dark, 
through the courts and rooms of the place. On 
the preceding nights we had observed through the 
transparent window-panes disturbing little lights 
which were promptly extinguished if we made any 
noise. These lights moved up and down the un- 
inhabited galleries, some distance away, like fire- 
flies. To-night's effort brings about the capture 
of three unknown men who with cutlasses and 
dark lanterns have climbed over the walls to pilfer 
in the imperial reserves. There are two Chinese 
and one European, a soldier of one of the allied 
nations. Not to make too much ado over it, we 
content ourselves with putting them out after cud- 
gelling them well and boxing their ears. 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 117 
V 

Tuesday, October 23. 

Last night there was a still harder frost, which 
covered the ground in the courtyard with small 
white crystals. This we discover during our regu- 
lar morning exploration of the galleries and de- 
pendencies of the palace. 

The former lodgings of the begging missionaries 
and the schoolrooms are overflowing with pack- 
ing boxes containing reserve supplies of silk and 
tea. There is also a heap of old bronzes, vases, 
and incense-burners piled up to the height of a 
man. 

But the church itself is the most extraordinary 
mine, — a regular Ali Baba's cave, quite filled. In 
addition to antiquities brought from the Violet 
City, the Empress had put there all the presents 
she received two years ago for her Jubilee. (And 
the line of mandarins who on that occasion brought 
presents to their sovereign was a league long and 
lasted an entire day.) 

In the nave and side aisles the boxes and cases 
are piled to half the height of the columns. In 
spite of the confusion, in spite of the hasty pil- 
laging of those who have preceded us, — Chinese, 
Japanese, German, and Russian soldiers, — a mar- 
vellous collection remains. The most enormous of 



ii8 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

the chests, — those beneath, — protected by their 
weight and by the mass of things on top of them, 
have not even been opened. The first to go were 
the innumerable smaller articles on top, most of 
them enclosed in glass cases or in yellow silk cover- 
ings, such as bunches of artificial flowers in agate, 
jade, coral, or lapis lazuli, pagodas and blue land- 
scapes made of the feathers of the kingfisher mar- 
vellously utilized. Works of Chinese patience 
which have cost years of toil are now broken in 
bits by the stroke of a bayonet, while the glass 
which protected them is crackling under one's feet 
on the floor. 

Imperial robes of heavy silk brocaded with gold 
dragons lie on the ground among cases of every 
description. We walk over them, we walk over 
carved ivories, over pearls and embroideries galore. 
There are bronzes a thousand years old, from the 
Empress's collection ; there are screens which seem 
to have been carved and embroidered by super- 
natural beings, there are antique vases, cloisonne, 
crackle ware, lacquers. Certain of the boxes un- 
derneath, bearing the names of emperors who died 
a century ago, contain presents sent them from 
distant provinces, which no one has ever taken the 
trouble to open. The sacristy of this astonishing 
cathedral contains in a series of pastboard boxes, 
all the sumptuous costumes for the actors in the 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 119 

Empress's theatre, with many fashionable head- 
dresses of former times. 

This church, so full of pagan riches, has kept 
its organ intact, although it has been silent for 
thirty years. My comrade mounts with me to the 
gallery to try the effect of some hymns of Bach 
and Handel under these vaultings, while the Afri- 
can chasseurs, up to their knees in ivories, silks, 
and court costumes, continue their task of clearing 
things out below. 

About ten o'clock this morning I cross over to 
the opposite side of the Violet City to visit the 
Palace of Ancestors, which is in charge of our 
marines. This was the Holy of Holies, the Pan- 
theon of dead emperors, a temple which was never 
even approached. 

It is in a particularly shady spot; in front of 
the entrance gate are light but ornate triumphal 
arches of green, red, and gold lacquer, resting on 
frail supports, and mingling with the sombre 
branches of the trees. Enormous cedars and cy- 
presses, twisted by age, shelter the marble monsters 
which crouch at the threshold and have given them 
a greenish hue. 

Passing the first enclosure, we naturally find a 
second. The courts, always shaded by old trees, 
succeed one another in solemn magnificence. They 



I20 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

are paved with large stones, between which grows 
a weed common in cemeteries; each one of the 
cedars and cypresses which Qast its shadow here 
is surrounded by a marble circle and seems to 
spring from a bed of carving. A thick layer of 
thousands of pine needles continually falling from 
the branches, covers everything. Gigantic incense- 
burners of dull bronze, centuries old, rest on pedes- 
tals bearing emblems of death. 

Everything here has an unprecedented stamp of 
antiquity and mystery. It is a unique place, 
haunted by the ghosts of the Chinese emperors. 

On each side are secondary temples, whose walls 
of lacquer and gold have taken on with time the 
shades of old Cordova leather. They contain 
broken catafalques, emblems and objects pertaining 
to certain funeral rites. 

It is all incomprehensible and terrible ; one feels 
profoundly incapable of grasping the meaning of 
these forms and symbols. 

At length, in the last court on a white marble 
terrace guarded by bronze roes, the Ancestors' 
Palace lifts its tarnished gold fagade, surmounted 
by a roof of yellow lacquer. 

It consists of one immense room, grand and 
gloomy, all in faded gold turning to coppery red. 
At the rear is a row of nine mysterious double 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 121 

doors, which are sealed with wax. In the centre 
are the tables on which the repasts for the ances- 
tral shades were placed, and where, on the day the 
Yellow City was taken, our hungry soldiers re- 
joiced to find an unexpected meal set forth. At 
each extremity of this lofty room chimes and 
stringed instruments await the hour, which may 
never come again, when they shall make music 
for the Shades. There are long, horizontal 
zithers, grave in tone, which are supported by 
golden monsters with closed eyes; gigantic 
chimes, one of bells, the others of marble slabs 
and jade, suspended by gold chains and sur- 
mounted by great fantastic beasts spreading their 
golden wings toward the dusky gold ceiling. 

There are also lacquered cupboards as big as 
houses, containing collections of old paintings, 
rolled on ebony or ivory sticks, and wrapped in 
imperial silks. 

Some of these are marvellous, and are a revela- 
tion of Chinese art of which we of the Occident 
have no conception, — an art at least equal to 
our own, though profoundly unlike it. Portraits 
of emperors in silent revery, or hunting in the 
forest, portray wild places which give one a long- 
ing for primitive nature, for the unspoiled world 
of rocks and trees. Portraits of dead empresses 
painted in water-colors on faded silks recall the 



122 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

candid grace of the Italian Primitives, — por- 
traits so pale, so colorless, as to seem like fleeting 
reflections of persons, yet showing a perfection 
of modelling attained with absolute simplicity, 
and with a look of concentration in the eye that 
makes you feel the likeness and enables you for 
one strange moment to live face to face with these 
princesses of the past who have slept for centuries 
in this splendid mausoleum. All these paintings 
were sacred, never seen or even suspected to exist 
by Europeans. 

Other rolls, which when spread out on the 
pavement are six or eight metres long, represent 
processions, receptions at court, or lines of am- 
bassadors; cavaliers, armies, banners; men of all 
kinds by the thousands, whose dress, embroid- 
eries, and arms, suggest that one should look at 
them with a magnifying glass. The whole his- 
tory of Chinese costume and ceremonial is con- 
tained in these precious miniatures. We even find 
here the reception, by I know not what emperor, 
of an ambassador from Louis XIV.; small per- 
sons with very French faces are represented as 
though for exhibition at Versailles, with wigs 
after the fashion of Roi-Soleil. 

The nine magnificent sealed doors at the back 
of the temj)le;, shut off the altars of nine emperors. 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 123 

They were good enough to break the red wax 
seals for me and to destroy the fastenings at one 
of the forbidden entrances, so that I might pene- 
trate into one of the sacred sanctuaries, — that of 
the great Emperor Kouang-Lu, who was in his 
glory at the beginning of the eighteenth century. 
A Serjeant has orders to accompany me in this 
profanation, holding in his hand a lighted candle, 
which seems to burn reluctantly here in the light 
cold air of the tomb. The temple itself was quite 
dark, but here it was black night itself, and it 
seemed as though dirt and cinders had been thrown 
about; the dust that accumulates so endlessly in 
Pekin seems a sign of death and decay. Passing 
from daylight, however dim, to the light of one 
small candle that is lost in the shadows, one sees 
confusedly at first, and there is a momentary hesita- 
tion, especially if the place is startling in itself. I 
see before me a staircase rising to a sort of taber- 
nacle, which seems to be full of artistic creations 
of some unknown kind. 

At both right and left, closed by complicated 
locks, are some severe chests which I am per- 
mitted to examine. In their compartments and 
in their double secret bottoms the sovereign's im- 
perial seals have been concealed by the hundreds, 
— heavy seals of onyx, jade, or gold struck off 
for every occasion of his life and in commemora- 



124 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

tion of all the acts of his reign; priceless relics 
which no one dared touch after his obsequies, and 
which have lain there for twice one hundred years. 

I go up into the tabernacle and the serjeant 
holds his candle before the marvels there, — jade 
sceptres and vases, some of a peculiar and ex- 
quisite workmanship in both dark and light jade, 
in cloisonne on gold, or in plain solid gold. Be- 
hind the altar in an obscure position a grand fig- 
ure which I had not perceived followed me with 
an oblique look that reached me through two cur- 
tains of yellow imperial silk, whose folds were 
black with dust. It is a pale portrait of the de- 
funct Emperor, — a life-sized portrait, so obscure, 
as seen by the light of our single wretched candle, 
as to seem like the reflection of a ghost in a tar- 
nished mirror. What a nameless sacrilege would 
our opening the chests where his treasures were 
hidden seem to this dead man, nay, even our pres- 
ence in this most impenetrable of all places in an 
impenetrable city! 

When everything is carefully closed again, when 
the red seals have been put back in place and the 
pale image of the Emperor returned to silence, to 
its customary shadows, I hasten to get away from 
the tomblike chill, to breathe the air again, to seek 
on the terrace some of the autumn sunshine which 
filters through the cedar branches. 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 



125 



I am going to take breakfast to-day with the 
French officers at the extreme north end of the 
imperial wood, at the Temple of the Silkworm. 
This, too, is an admirable old sanctuary, preceded 
by sumptuous courts with marble terraces and 
bronze vases. This Yellow City is a complete 
world of temples and palaces set in green. Up 
to last month the travellers who thought they 
were seeing China, and to whom all this remained 
closed, forbidden, could have no idea of the mar- 
vellous city opened to us by the war. 

When I start back to my Palace of the Ro- 
tunda, about two o'clock, a burning sun is shin- 
ing on the dark cedars and willows; one seeks 
shade as if it were summer, and the willows are 
losing many of their leaves. At the entrance to 
the Marble Bridge, not far from my gate, the two 
bodies in blue gowns which lie among the lotus 
are bathed in an ironical splendor of light. 

After the soldiers on guard have closed the low 
postern by which one gains access to my high 
garden, I am again alone in the silence until the 
sun's rays, falling oblique and red upon my writ- 
ing-table, announce the coming of the melancholy 
evening. 

I am scarcely seated at my work before a 
friendly head, discreetly rubbed against my leg to 



126 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

attract my attention, announces the visit of the 
cat. I am not unprepared for this visit, for I 
now expect it every day. 

An hour of ideal quiet goes by, broken only 
by two or three ravens' cries. Then I hear the 
noise of cavalry galloping over the stone pave- 
ments at the foot of my wall; it proves to be 
Field-Marshal von Waldersee, followed by an 
escort of soldiers with small flags at the tips of 
their spears. He is returning to the palace where 
he lives, not far from here, one of the most sump- 
tuous of all the residences of the Empress. My 
eyes follow the cavalcade as it crosses the Marble 
Bridge, turns to the left, and is lost behind the 
trees. Then the silence returns, absolute as before. 

From time to time I go out to walk on my high 
terrace, and always discover there something new. 
There are enormous tam-tams under my cedars, 
with which to call upon the gods; there are beds 
of yellow chrysanthemums and Indian-yellow 
carnations, upon which the frost has left a few 
flowers; there is a kind of dais of marble and 
faience supporting an object quite indefinite at 
first sight, — one of the largest blocks of jade in 
the world, cut in imitation of an ocean wave with 
monsters struggling in the foam. 

I visit some deserted kiosks, — still furnished 
with ebony thrones, divans, and yellow silk 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 127 

cushions, — which seem Hke Httle clandestine love 
nests. There is no doubt that the beautiful sov- 
ereign, passionate still, though aging, used to 
isolate herself here with her favorites among the 
imperial silks in these protecting shadows. 

My only companion in my palace of dreams 
to-day is the big alabaster goddess robed in gold, 
who perpetually smiles upon broken vases and 
withered flowers; her temple, where the sun 
never enters, is always cold and grows dark be- 
fore it should. 

But now real night has come, and I begin to 
feel chilly. The sun, which in France is at its 
meridional apogee, is sinking; sinking here, a big 
red ball without light or heat, going down behind 
the Lake of the Lotus in a wintry mist. 

The chill of the night comes on suddenly, giv- 
ing me the sensation of an abrupt descent into a 
cave of ice and a furtive little feeling of anguish 
at being exiled so far from home. 

I greet my two servants like friends when they 
come for me, bringing a cape for me to wear on 
the way back to the palace. 



128 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

VI 

Wednesday, October 24. 

The same glorious sunshine in gallery, garden, 
and wood. Each day the work of our soldiers 
with their gangs of Chinese laborers goes on in 
the nave of the Cathedral ; they carefully separate 
such treasures as have remained intact, or nearly 
so, from what is irreparably injured. There is a 
continual coming and going across our court of 
furniture and precious bronzes in hand-barrows; 
all that is taken out of the church is put in places 
not at present needed for our troops, to await its 
final transportation to the Ancestors' Palace, where 
it is to remain under lock and key. 

We have seen so many of these magnificent 
things that we are satiated and worn with them. 
The most remarkable discoveries made from the 
depths of the oldest cases have ceased to astonish 
us; there is nothing now that we want for the 
decoration — oh, so fleeting — of our apartments ; 
nothing is sufficiently beautiful for our Heliogaba- 
lean fancies. There will be no to-morrow, for the 
inventory must be finished within a few days, and 
then our long galleries will be parcelled out for 
officers' rooms and offices. 

In the way of discoveries, we came this morn- 
ing upon a pile of bodies, — the last defenders of 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 129 

the Imperial City, who fell all in a heap and 
have remained in positions indicative of extreme 
agony. The crows and the dogs have gone down 
into the ditch where they lie and have devoured 
eyes, chests, and intestines; there is no flesh left 
on their bones, and their red spinal columns show 
through their ragged raiment. Shoes are left, but 
no hair; Chinamen have evidently descended into 
the deep hole with the dogs and the crows, and 
have scalped the dead in order to make false 
queues. 

To-day I leave the Palace of the North early 
and for all day, as I must go over to the Euro- 
pean quarter to see our Minister at the Spanish 
legation, where he was taken in; he is still in 
bed, but convalescing so that at last I can make to 
him the communications which I undertook on be- 
half of the admiral. 

For four days I have not been outside the red 
walls of the Imperial City, have not left our superb 
solitude. So when I find myself once more among 
the ugly gray ruins of the commonplace streets of 
the Tartar City, in everybody's Pekin, in the Pekin 
known to all travellers, I appreciate better the 
unique peculiarities of our great wood, of our lake, 
and of all our forbidden glories. 

However, this city of the people seems less for- 

9 



ijo THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

lorn than on the day of my arrival in the wind 
and snow. The people are beginning to return, 
as I have been told; Pekin is being re-populated, 
the shops are opening, houses are rebuilding, and 
already a few humble and entertaining trades have 
been taken up along the streets, on tables, under 
tents, and under parasols. The warm sunshine of 
the Chinese autumn is the friend of many a poor 
wretch who has no fire. 



VII 

THE TEMPLE OF THE LAMAS 

The Temple of the Lamas, the oldest sanctuary in 
Pekin, and one of the most curious in the world, 
contains a profusion of marvellous work of the 
old Chinese gold and silver smiths, and a library 
of inestimable value. 

This precious temple has seldom been seen, al- 
though it has been in existence for centuries. 
Before this year's European invasion, access to it 
was strictly forbidden to " outside barbarians," 
and even since the Allies have had possession of 
Pekin, very few have ever gone there. It is pro- 
tected by its location in an angle of the Tartar wall 
in quite a lifeless part of the city whose different 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 131 

quarters are dying from century to century as old 
trees lose their branches one by one. 

Going there to-day on a pilgrimage with the 
members of the French legation, we find that we 
are all there for the first time. 

In order to reach it we first cross the eastern 
market-place, three or four kilometres through a 
sunless and desolate Pekin, — a Pekin that bears 
the marks of war and defeat, and where things are 
spread out for sale on the filth and ashes of the 
ground. Some matchless objects transmitted by 
one generation of mandarins to another are to 
be found among the rags and old iron; ancient 
palaces, as well as the houses of the poor, have 
emptied here some of their most astonishing con- 
tents; the sordid and the marvellous lie side by 
side, — here some pestilential rags, there a bibelot 
three thousand years old. Along the walls of the 
houses as far as one can see, the cast-off garments 
of dead men and women are hung. It is a place 
for the sale of extravagant clothing without end, 
opulent furs from Mongolia stolen from the rich, 
gay costumes of a courtesan, or magnificent heavy 
silk robes which belonged to great ladies who have 
disappeared. The Chinese populace, who have 
done a hundred times more than the invaders 
in the way of pillage, burning, and destruction in 
Pekin, the uniformly dirty populace, dressed in 



132 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

blue cotton, with squinting, evil eyes, swarm 
and crawl about, eagerly searching and raising a 
perfect cloud of microbes and dust. Ignoble 
scoundrels with long queues circulate amongst the 
crowd, offering robes of ermine or blue-fox, or 
admirable sables for a few piasters, in their eager- 
ness to be rid of stolen goods. 

As we approach the object of our journey it 
grows more quiet; the busy, crowded streets are 
gradually succeeded by streets that have perished 
of old age, where there are no passers; grass 
grows on the thresholds and behind abandoned 
walls ; we see trees with branches knotted like the 
arms of the aged. 

We dismount before a crumbling entrance which 
seems to open into a park which might be a ghosts' 
walk; and this is the entrance to the temple. 

What sort of a reception shall we have in this 
mysterious enclosure? We do not know; and at 
first there is no one to receive us. But the chief 
of the Lamas soon appears, bowing, with his keys, 
and we follow him across the funereal park. 

With a violet dress, a shaven head, and a face 
like old wax, at once smiling, frightened, and hos- 
tile, he conducts us to a second door, opening into 
an immense court paved with white stones, com- 
pletely surrounded by the curious walls of the first 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 133 

buildings of the temple. Their foundations are 
massive, their roofs curved and forked, the walls 
themselves awe-inspiring on account of their size, 
and hermetically sealed; and all this is the color 
of ochre and rust, with golden reflections thrown 
on the high roofs by the evening sun. 

The court is deserted, the grass grows between 
the paving-stones. On the white marble balus- 
trades in front of the closed doors of these great 
temples are ranged " prayer-mills," which are 
conical thrones made of bronze, and engraved with 
secret symbols, which the priests turn and turn 
while murmuring words unintelligible to men of 
our day. 

In old Asia, which is our ancestor, I have pene- 
trated to the heart of ancient sanctuaries, trem- 
bling meanwhile with indefinable anguish before 
symbols whose meaning has been lost for centuries. 
This kind of anguish has never been so tinged 
with melancholy as to-night, standing before this 
row of silent " prayer-mills " in the cold, the wind, 
the solitude, the dilapidation of this court, with its 
white grass-grown pavement and mysterious yel- 
low walls. 

Young Lamas appear one after the other as 
noiselessly as shadows, and even Lama children, 
for they begin to instruct them quite young in the 
old rites no longer understood by any one. 



134 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

They are young, but they have no appearance of 
youth; senility is upon them as well as a look of 
I know not what of mystical dulness; their gaze 
seems to have come from past centuries and to 
have lost its clearness on the way. Whether from 
poverty or renunciation, the yellow gowns that 
cover their thin bodies are faded and torn. Their 
faces and their dress, as well as their religion and 
their sanctuary, are covered, so to speak, with the 
ashes of time. 

They are glad to show us all that we wish to 
see in their old buildings; and we begin with the 
study-rooms, where so many generations of ob- 
scure and unprogressive priests have been slowly 
formed. 

By looking closely, it is plain that all these walls, 
now the color of the oxydized metal, were once 
covered with beautiful designs in lacquer and gilt; 
to harmonize them all into the present old-bronze 
shades has required an indefinite succession of 
burning summers and glacial winters, together 
with the dust, — the incessant dust blown across 
Pekin from the deserts of Mongolia. 

Their study-rooms are very dark, — anything 
else would have surprised us; and this explains 
why their eyes protrude so from their drooping lids. 
Very dark these rooms are, but immense ; sumptu- 
ous still, in spite of their neglect, and conceived 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 



^3S 



on a grand scale, as are all the monuments of this 
city, which was in its day the most magnificent in 
the world. The high ceilings are supported by 
lacquered columns. There are small seats for the 
students, and carved desks by the hundred, all 
arranged in rows and worn and defaced by long 
use. Gods in golden robes are seated in the cor- 
ners. The wall hangings of priceless old work 
represent the joys of Nirvana. The libraries are 
overflowing with old manuscripts, some in the 
form of books, and others in great rolls wrapped 
up in colored silks. 

We are shown into the first temple, which, as 
soon as the door is opened, shines with a golden 
glow, — the glow of gold used discreetly, and with 
the warm, reddish tones which lacquer takes on in 
the course of centuries. There are three golden 
altars, on which are enthroned in the midst of a 
pleiad of small golden gods three great ones, with 
downcast eyes. The straight stems of the gold 
flowers standing in gold vases in front of the 
altars are of archaic stiffness. The repetition, the 
persistent multiplication of the same objects, atti- 
tudes, and faces, is one of the characteristics of 
the unchanging art of pagodas. As is the case 
with all the temples of the past, there is here no 
opening for the light ; only the light that comes in 
through the half-opened doors illumines from be- 



136 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

low the smile of the great seated idols, and shows 
dimly the decorations of the ceiling. Nothing 
has been touched, nothing taken away, not even 
the admirable cloisonne vases where sticks of in- 
cense are burning, — evidently this place has been 
ignored. 

Behind this temple, behind its dusty depend- 
encies, in which the tortures of the Buddhist hell 
are depicted, the Lamas conduct us to a second 
court, paved in white stones, similar in every way 
to the first; the same dilapidation, the same soli- 
tude, the same coppery-yellow walls. 

After this second court comes another temple, 
identical with the first, so much so that one won- 
ders if one is not the victim of an illusion; the 
same figures, the same smiles, the same gold bou- 
quets in vases of gold, — a patient and servile 
reproduction of the same magnificence. 

After this second temple there is a third court, 
and a third temple exactly like the two others. 
But the sun is now lower, and lights only the ex- 
treme tips of the faience roofs and the thousands 
of small monsters of yellow enamel which seem 
to be chasing one another over the tiling. The 
wind increases, and we shiver with cold. The 
pigeons in the carved cornice begin to seek their 
nests, and the silent owls wake up and begin to 
fly about. 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 137 

As we expected, this last temple — possibly the 
oldest, certainly the most dilapidated — is only a 
repetition of the other two, save for an idol in the 
centre, which, instead of being seated and life- 
sized, is colossal and standing. The gold ceiling 
rises from about half the height of the statue into 
a cupola, also gilded, which forms a sort of box 
enclosing the upper part of the figure. To see the 
face one must go close to the altars and look up 
between the rigid flowers and the incense-burners. 
It then looks like a Titanic mummy in its case, 
with a downcast look that makes one nervous. But 
on looking steadily, it exercises a sort of spell; 
one is hypnotized and held by that smile so im- 
partially bestowed upon all this entourage of dying 
splendor, gold, dust, cold, twilight, ruins, silence. 



VIII 

CONFUCIUS 

There was still a half-hour of sunshine after we 
left the ghostly Lamas, so we went to pay a call 
on Confucius, who dwells in the same quarter, — 
the same necropolis, one might say, — in an aban- 
donment equally depressing. 

The big worm-eaten door slips off its hinges 



138 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

and falls down as we attempt to enter, and an owl 
who was asleep there takes fright and flies away. 
Behold us in a sort of mortuary wood, walking 
over the brown autumn grass. 

A triumphal arch is the first thing we come 
across, built to pay homage to some great Chinese 
thinker. It is of a charming design, although 
very peculiar, with three little bell-towers of yellow 
enamel, which crown the whole, their curved roofs 
decorated with monsters at each one of the corners. 

It stands there like some precious bibelot lost 
among the ruins. Its freshness is surprising where 
all else is so dilapidated. One realizes its great age 
from the archaic nature of its details; but it is 
made of such enduring materials that the wear and 
tear of centuries in this dry climate has not affected 
it. The base is white marble, the rest is of faience, 
— faience both yellow and green, with lotus leaves, 
clouds, and chimseras in bold relief. 

Farther on is a large rotunda which gives evi- 
dence of extreme antiquity; this appears to be the 
color of dirt or ashes, and is surrounded by a moat 
where the lotus and the reeds are dying. This is 
a retreat where wise men may come to meditate 
upon the vanities of life; the object of the moat 
is to isolate it and make it more quiet. 

It is reached by an arched bridge of marble, 
with railings that vaguely suggest a succession of 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 



139 



animals' heads. Inside, it is deserted, abandoned, 
crumbling away, and the gold ceiling is full of 
birds' nests. A really magnificent desk is left, 
with an arm-chair and a table. It seems as though 
a kind of fine clay had been scattered by handfuls 
over everything ; the ground is covered with it too, 
so that one's feet sink into it and one's steps are 
muffled. We soon discover that there is still a car- 
pet underneath, and that it is really nothing but 
dust which has been accumulating for centuries, — 
the thick and ever-present dust which the Mongo- 
lian winds blow across Pekin. 

After a short walk under the old trees we reach 
the temple itself, which is preceded by a court 
surrounded by tall marble pillars. This looks 
exactly like a cemetery, and yet there are no dead 
lying under these stele, which are there merely to 
glorify the memory of the departed. Philosophers 
who in bygone centuries made this region illus- 
trious by their presence and by their dreams, pro- 
found thinkers, lost to us forever, have their names 
as well as some few of their most transcendent 
utterances, perpetuated on these stele. 

On either side of the white steps leading to 
the sanctuary, blocks of marble are arranged in the 
form of a tam-tam. These are so old as to make 
one's head swim; and upon them maxims intelli- 
gible only to a few erudite mandarins have been 



I40 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

written in primitive Chinese characters, in letters 
contemporary with and sisters to the hieroglyphs 
of Egypt. 

This is the temple of disinterestedness, of ab- 
stract thought, and of cold speculation. One is 
struck at once by its absolute simplicity, for which, 
up to this point, nothing in China has prepared us. 
Very large, very high as to ceilings, very grand 
and of a uniform blood-red color, it is magnifi- 
cently empty and supremely quiet. The columns 
and walls are red, with a few discreet decorations 
in gold, dimmed by time and dust. In the centre is 
a bouquet of gigantic lotus in a colossal vase, and 
that is all. After the profusion, the debauch of 
monsters and idols, the multiplication of human 
and animal forms in the usual Chinese pagoda, this 
absence of figures of any sort is a comfort and a 
relief. 

In the niches all along the wall there are stele, 
red like the rest of the place, and consecrated to the 
memory of persons still more eminent than those 
of the entrance court, with quotations from their 
writings carved upon them. The stele of Confu- 
cius himself, which is larger than the others, and 
has longer quotations, occupies the position of 
honor in the centre of this severe Pantheon, and is 
placed on a kind of altar. 

Properly speaking, this is not a temple ; it is not 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 141 

a place for prayer or service. It is rather an 
academy, a meeting-place for calm, philosophic 
discussion. In spite of its dust and its abandoned 
air, it seems that newly elected members of the 
Academy of Pekin (which is even more than our 
own the conservator of form and ceremony, I am 
assured) are still bound to give a conference here. 

Besides various maxims of renunciation and 
wisdom written from top to bottom of the stele, 
Confucius has left to this sanctuary certain 
thoughts on literature which have been engraved 
in letters of gold in such a way as to form pictures 
hung on the walls. 

Here is one which I transcribe for young 
western scholars who are preoccupied with classi- 
fication and inquiry. They will find in it a reply 
twice two thousand years old to one of their fa- 
vorite questions : " The literature of the future 
will be the literature of compassion." 

It is almost five o'clock when the gloomy, red, 
autumn sun goes down behind great China on 
Europe's side, and we leave the temples and the 
grove behind. I separate from my companions, 
for they live in the legation quarter in the southern 
part of the Tartar City, while I go to the Imperial 
City, far from here. 

I have no idea how to get out of this dead re- 



142 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

glon, all new to me, where we have spent the day, 
and through the lonely labyrinthine streets of 
Pekin. I have as a guide a " mafou," who has 
been lent to me, and I only know that I have more 
than a mile to go before reaching my sumptuous, 
deserted quarters. 

My companions gone, I walk for a few moments 
in the silent old uninhabited streets before reaching 
one of the long, broad avenues where blue cotton 
dresses and long-queued yellow faces begin to 
appear. There is an interminable row of low 
houses, wretched, gray things, on either side of 
the street, where the tramp of horses raises the 
black friable dust in infectious clouds. 

The street is so wide and the houses so low 
that almost the whole of the twilight sky is visible 
above our heads; and so suddenly does the cold 
come on after sunset that in a moment we freeze. 

The crowds are dense about the food-shops, 
and the air is fetid in the neighborhood of the 
butchers, where dog-meat and roasted grasshop- 
pers are sold. But what good nature in all these 
people of the streets, who on the day after battle 
and bombardment permit me to pass without so 
much as an evil look! What could I do, with my 
borrowed '' mafou " and my revolver, if my ap- 
pearance did not happen to please them? 

For a time after this we are alone in desolate, 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 143 

ruined quarters of the town. According to the 
position of the pale, setting sun, it seems to me that 
we are on the right track; but if my " mafou," 
who speaks nothing but Chinese, has not under- 
stood me, I shall be in a predicament. 

The return journey in the cold seems inter- 
minable to me. At last, however, the artificial 
mountain of the imperial park is silhouetted in 
gray on the sky ahead of us, with the little faience 
kiosks and the twisted trees grouping themselves 
like scenes painted on lacquer. We reach one of 
the yellow enamelled gates of the blood-red wall 
surrounding the Imperial City, where two senti- 
nels of the allied armies present arms. From here 
I know my way, I am at home; so I dismiss my 
guide and proceed alone to the Yellow City, from 
w^hich at this hour no one is allowed to depart. 

The Imperial, the Yellow, the Forbidden City, 
encircled by its own terrible walls in the very heart 
of great Pekin, with its Babylonian environment, 
is a park rather than a city, a wood of venerable 
trees, — sombre cypresses and cedars, — several 
leagues in circumference. Some ancient temples 
peep through the branches, and several modern 
palaces built according to the fancies of the Em- 
press regent. This great forest, to which I return 
to-night as if it were my home, has at no former 



144 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

period of history been known to foreigners; even 
ambassadors have never passed its gates; until 
recently it has been absolutely inaccessible and 
profoundly unknown to Europeans. 

This Yellow City surrounds and protects with 
its tranquil shadows the still more mysterious 
Violet City, the residence of the Son of Heaven, 
which occupies a commanding square in the centre 
of it, protected by moats and double ramparts. 

What silence reigns here at this hour! What 
a lugubrious region it is ! Death hovers over these 
paths where formerly princesses passed in their 
palanquins and empresses with their silk-robed fol- 
lowers. Now that the usual inhabitants have fled 
and Occidental barbarians have taken their places, 
one meets no one in the woods, unless it be an 
occasional patrol or a few soldiers of one nation 
or another, and only the sentinels' step is heard 
before palace or temple, or the cries of the crows 
and the barking of dogs about the dead. 

I have to cross a region filled with trees, noth- 
ing but trees, — trees of a truly Chinese contour, 
whose aspect is in itself quite sufiicient to give one 
the sharp realization of exile; the road goes on 
under the deep shadow of the branches that turn 
the twilight into night. Belated magpies are hop- 
ping about on the withered grass, and the crows, 
too, their croakings exaggerated by the cold and 




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IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 



145 



the silence. At the end of a quarter of an hour a 
corner of the Violet City appears, just at a turn 
of the road. She slowly reveals herself, silent, 
closed, like a colossal tomb. Her long", straight 
walls are lost in the confusion and obscurity of 
the distance. As I draw nearer to her the silence 
seems to be intensified, as though it grew as she 
broods over it. 

One corner of the Lake of the Lotus begins to 
come out like a bit of mirror placed among the 
reeds to receive the last reflections of the sky. I 
must pass along its edges in front of the Island of 
Jade, which is approached by a marble bridge ; and 
I know in advance, because I have seen it daily, 
the horrible grimace in store for me from the 
two monsters who have guarded the bridge for 
centuries. 

At length I emerge from the shadow and op- 
pression of the trees into open space with the 
clear sky overhead, leaving the lake behind me. 
The first stars are appearing, indicating another 
of the nights that pass here in an excess of soli- 
tude and silence, with only an occasional gunshot 
to break the tragic calm of wood and palace. 

The Lake of the Lotus, which during the season 

of flowers must be the marvellous field of pink 

blossoms described by the poets of China, is now, 

at the end of October, only a melancholy swamp 

10 



146 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

covered with brown leaves, from which at this 
hour a wintry mist rises that hangs like a cloud 
over the dead reeds. 

My dwelling is on the other side of the lake; 
and now I have reached the Marble Bridge which 
spans it with a beautiful curve, — a curve that 
stands out white in spite of the darkness. 

At this point a corpse-like smell greets my nos- 
trils. For a week I have known whence it comes, 
— from a person in a blue gown lying with out- 
spread arms, face downward, on the slimy shore; 
and ten steps farther on his comrade is lying in 
the grass. 

As soon as I cross the beautiful lonely Marble 
Bridge through the pale cloud that hangs over the 
water I shall be almost home. , At my left is a 
faience gateway guarded by two German senti- 
nels, — two living beings whom I shall not be 
sorry to see, — who will salute me in automatic 
unison; this will be at the entrance to the garden 
where Field-Marshal von Waldersee resides, in 
one of the Empress's palaces. 

Two hundred metres farther on, after passing 
more gates and more ruins, I shall come to a fresh 
opening in an old wall, which will be my entrance, 
guarded by one of our own men, — an African 
chasseur. Another of the Empress's palaces is 
there concealed by its surroundings, — a frail 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 147 

palace, almost wholly enclosed in glass. Once 
there, I push open a glass door decorated with 
pink lotus flowers, and find again my nightly 
fairyland, where priceless porcelains, cloisonne, 
and lacquer stand about in profusion on the yel- 
low carpets under the wonderfully carved arches 
of ebony. 



IX 

It is dark when I reach my dwelling-place. The 
fires are already lighted in the subterranean fur- 
naces, and a soft heat rises through the thick yel- 
low carpets. We feel much at home and quite 
comfortable now in this palace, which at first 
seemed so dreary to us. 

I dine, as usual, at a small ebony table, which 
is lost in the long gallery so dark at either end, 
in company with my comrade. Captain C, who 
has discovered new and wonderful treasures dur- 
ing the day, which he has spread out, that we 
may enjoy them for at least an evening. 

First, there is a throne of a style unknown to 
us ; some screens of colossal size that rest in ebony 
sockets, on which shining birds are battling with 
monkeys amid the flowers of a dream. Cande- 
labra, which have remained in their silk cases 
since the seventeenth century, now hang from the 



148 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

arches above our heads, — a shower of pearls and 
enamel, — and many other indescribable things 
added to-day to our wealth of articles of antique 
art. 

It is the last time we shall be able to enjoy our 
gallery in its completeness, for to-morrow most 
of these objects are to be labelled and sent off 
with the reserve stock. Retaining one salon for 
the general, who is to winter here, the rest of this 
wing of the palace is to be cut up by light parti- 
tions into lodgings and offices for the staff. This 
work will be done under the direction of Captain 
C, who is chief architect and supervisor, whilst 
I, a passing guest, will have only a consulting 
voice. 

As this evening marks the last chapter of our 
imperial phantasmagoria, we sit up later than 
usual. For this once we are childish enough to 
array ourselves in sumptuous Asiatic garments, 
then we throw ourselves down on the cushions 
and call opium — so favorable to weary and 
blase imaginations such as ours have unfortu- 
nately begun to be — to our aid. Alas! to be 
alone in this palace would have seemed magical 
enough to us a few years ago without the aid of 
any avatar. 

The opium, needless to say, is of exquisite 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 149 

quality; its fumes, rising in rapid little spirals, 
soon make the air sweet and heavy. It quickly 
brings to us the ecstasy, the forgetfulness, the re- 
lief, the youthful lightness so dear to the Chinese. 

There is absolute silence without; absolute si- 
lence and deserted courts, where all is cold and 
black. The gallery grows warm, the heat of the 
furnace is heavy, for these walls of glass and 
paper, so frail as a protection against surprises 
from without, form rooms almost hermetically 
sealed and propitious to the intoxication that 
comes from perfumes. 

Stretched out upon the silken cushions, we gaze 
at the receding ceiling, at the row of arches so 
elaborately carved into lacework, from which the 
lanterns with the dangling pearls are suspended. 
Chimaeras of gold stand out from the thick folds 
of the green or yellow silks. High screens of 
cloisonne, lacquer, or ebony, the great luxury of 
China, shut off the corners, forming luxurious 
nooks filled with jars, bronzes, and monsters 
with eyes of jade, — eyes which squintingly fol- 
low you. 

Absolute silence, except that from a distance 
one of those shots is heard which never fails to 
mark the torpor of the night, or a cry of distress 
or alarm; skirmishes between Europeans in the 



I50 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

posts and thieving Chinamen; sentinels afraid of 
the dead or of the night shooting at a shadow. 

In the foreground, which is Hghted by one lamp, 
the only luminous things whose design and color 
are engraved upon our already fixed gaze are four 
gigantic incense-burners — hieratic in form, and 
made of an adorable blue cloisonne — resting on 
gold elephants. They stand out against a back- 
ground of black lacquer traversed by flying birds, 
whose plumage is made of different kinds of 
mother-of-pearl. No doubt our lamp is going 
out, for, with the exception of these nearer things, 
we scarcely see the magnificence of the place until 
the outline of some rare vase five hundred years 
old, the reflection of a piece of inimitable silk, or 
the brilliancy of some bit of enamel recalls it to 
our memory. 

The fumes of the opium keep us awake until 
very late, in a state of mind that is both lucid and 
at the same time confused. We have never until 
now understood Chinese art; it is revealed to us 
for the first time to-night. In the beginning we 
were ignorant, as is all the world, of its almost 
terrible grandeur until we saw the Imperial City 
and the walled palace of the Son of Heaven ; now 
at this nocturnal hour, amid the fragrant fumes 
that rise in clouds in our over-heated gallery, our 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 



151 



impressions of the big sombre temples, of the 
yellow enamelled roofs crowning the Titanic build- 
ings that rise above terraces of marble, are exalted 
above mere captivated admiration to respect and 
awe. 

In the thousand details of its embroidery and 
carvings which surround us in such profusion, 
we learn how skilful and how exact this art is 
in rendering the grace of flowers, exaggerating 
their superb and languishing poses and their 
deep or deliciously pale colorings; then in order 
to make clear the cruelty of every kind of living 
thing, down to dragons and butterflies, they place 
claws, horns, terrible smiles, and leering eyes upon 
them! They are right; these embroideries on our 
cushions are roses, lotus flowers, chrysanthemums ! 
As for the insects, the scarabs, the flies, and the 
moths, they are just like those horrid things 
painted in gold relief on our court fans. 

When we arrive at that special form of physical 
prostration which sets the mind free (disengages 
the astral body, they say at Benares), everything 
in the palace, as well as in the outside world, 
seems easy and amusing. We congratulate our- 
selves upon having come to live in the Yellow City 
at so unique a period in the history of China, at a 
moment when everything is free, and we are left 
almost alone to gratify our whims and curiosity. 



152 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

Life seems to hold to-morrows filled with new and 
interesting circumstances. In our conversation we 
find words, formulas, images, to express the inex- 
pressible, the things that have never been said. 
The hopelessness, the misery that one carries about 
like the weight on a convict's leg, is incontestably 
lessened; and as to the small annoyances of the 
moment, the little pin-pricks, they exist no longer. 
For example, when we see through the glass gal- 
lery the pale light of a moving lantern in a distant 
part of our palace, we say without the slightest 
feeling of disturbance : " More thieves ! They 
must see us. We '11 hunt them down to-morrow ! " 
And it seems of no consequence, even comfort- 
able to us, that our cushions and our imperial silks 
are shut off from the cold and the horrors by noth- 
ing but panes of glass. 



X 

Thursday, October 25. 

I HAVE worked all day, with only my cat for com- 
pany, in the solitude of the Rotunda Palace that 
I deserted yesterday. 

At the hour when the red sun is setting behind 
the Lake of the Lotus my two servants come as 
usual to get me. But this time, after crossing the 
Marble Bridge, we pass the turn which leads to 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 153 

my palace, for I have to pay a visit to Monsignor 
Favier, the Bishop of Pekin, who lives in our 
vicinity, outside yet quite near the Imperial City. 

It is twilight by the time we reach the " Cath- 
olic Concession," where the missionaries and their 
little band of yellow followers endured the stress 
of a long siege. The cathedral, riddled with balls, 
has a vague look against the dark sky; and it is 
so dusty that we see as through a fog this newly 
built cathedral, the one the Empress paid for in 
place of the one she took for a storehouse. 

Monsignor Favier, the head of the French mis- 
sions, has lived in Pekin for forty years, has en- 
joyed for a long time the favor of the sovereigns, 
and was the first to foresee and denounce the Boxer 
peril. In spite of the temporary blow to his work, 
he is still a power in China, where the title of 
Viceroy was at one time conferred upon him. 

The white-walled room where he receives me, 
lately pierced by a cannon-ball, ' contains some 
precious Chinese bibelots, whose presence here 
astonishes every one at first. He collected them 
in other days, and is selling them now in order 
to be able to assist several thousand hungry people 
driven by the war into his church. 

The bishop is a tall man, with fine, regular 
features, and eyes that show shrewdness and en- 
ergy. He must resemble in looks, as well as in 



154 



THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 



his determined will, those bishops of the Middle 
Ages who went on Crusades to the Holy Land. 
It is only since the outbreak of hostilities against 
the Christians that he has resumed the priests' 
cloth and cut off his long Chinese queue. Per- 
mission to wear the queue and the Mandarins' 
garb was one of the greatest and most subversive 
favors accorded the Lazarists by the Celestial 
emperors. 

He was good enough to keep me with him for 
an hour. A well-dressed Chinese served us with 
tea while he told me of the recent tragedy; of the 
defence of fourteen hundred metres of wall, or- 
ganized out of nothing by a young ensign and 
thirty sailors, of their holding out for two or 
three months right in the heart of an enflamed 
city, against thousands of enemies wild with fury. 
Although he tells it all in a very low tone, his 
speech grows warmer, and vibrates with a sort of 
soldierly ruggedness as some emotion chokes him, 
especially whenever he mentions Ensign Henry. 

Ensign Henry died, pierced by two balls, at the 
end of the last great fight. Of his thirty sailors 
many were killed, and almost all were wounded. 
This story of a summer should be written some- 
where in letters of gold, lest it should be too quickly 
forgotten; it should be attested, lest some day it 
should no longer be believed. 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 155 

The sailors under the command of this young 
officer were not picked men; they were the first 
that came, selected hap-hazard on board ship. A 
few noble priests shared their vigils, a few brave 
seminarists took a turn under their orders, be- 
sides a horde of Chinese armed with miserable 
old guns. But the sailors were the heart and 
soul of this obstinate defence; there was neither 
weakening nor complaint in the face of death, 
which was at all times present in its most atro- 
cious forms. 

An officer and ten Italian soldiers brought hither 
by chance also fought heroically, leaving six of 
their number among the dead. 

Oh, the heroism, the lowly heroism of these 
poor Chinese Christians, both Catholic and Prot- 
estant, who sought protection in the bishop's 
palace, knowing that one word of abjuration, one 
reverence to a Buddhist image would ensure their 
lives, yet who remained there, faithful, in spite of 
gnawing hunger and almost certain martyrdom! 
And at the same time, outside of these walls which 
protected them in a measure, fifteen thousand of 
their brothers were burned, dismembered, and 
thrown piecemeal into the river on account of 
the new faith which they would not renounce. 

Unheard-of things happened during this siege: 



156 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

a bishop/ followed by an ensign and four ma- 
rines, went to wrest a cannon from the enemy, 
balls grazing their heads; theological students 
manufactured powder from the charred branches 
of the trees in the close, and from saltpetre, which 
they scaled the walls to steal at night from a 
Chinese arsenal. 

They lived in a continual tumult under a con- 
tinual fire of stones and shot; all the marble bell- 
towers of the cathedral, riddled by shells, tottered 
and fell piecemeal upon their heads. At all hours, 
without truce, bullets rained in the court, break- 
ing in the roofs and weakening the walls. At 
night especially balls fell like hailstones to the 
sound of the Boxers' trumpets and frightful gongs. 
And all the while their death-cries, " Cha ! Cha ! " 
(Let us kill, let us kill) or " Chao! Chao! " (Let 
us burn, let us burn) filled the city like the cries 
of an enormous pack of hounds. 

It was in July and August under a burning sky, 
and they lived surrounded by fire; incendiaries 
sprinkled their roofs and their entrances with pe- 
troleum by means of pumps and threw lighted 
torches onto them ; they were obliged to run from 
one place to another and to climb up with ladders 
and wet blankets to put out the flames. They had 

1 Monsignor Jarlin, the coadjutor of Monsignor Favier. 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 157 

to run, run all the time, when they were so ex- 
hausted and their heads so heavy from having had 
no food, that they could scarcely stand. 

Even the good Sisters had to organize a kind 
of race for the women and children, who were 
stupefied from fear and suffering. It was these 
sublime women who decided when it was neces- 
sary to change positions according to the direc- 
tion from which the shells came and who chose 
the least dangerous moment to fly, with bowed 
heads, across a court, and to take refuge else- 
where. A thousand women without wills or ideas 
of their own, with poor dying babies clinging to 
their breasts, followed them; a human eddy, ad- 
vancing, receding, pushing, in order to keep in 
sight the white caps of their protectors. 

They had to run when, from lack of food, they 
could scarcely stand, and when a supreme lassitude 
impelled them to lie down on the ground to await 
death! They had to become accustomed to de- 
tonations that never ceased, to perpetual noise, to 
shot and shell, to the fall of stones, to seeing one 
of their number fall bathed in his own blood! 
Hunger was the most intolerable of all. They 
made soup of the leaves and young branches of 
the trees, of dahlia roots from the gardens and of 
lily bulbs. The poor Chinese would say humbly, 
" We must keep the little grain we have left for 



158 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

the sailors who are protecting us, and whose need 
of strength is greater than ours." 

The bishop told of a poor woman who had been 
confined the previous night, who dragged herself 
after him imploring : *' Bishop, bishop, give me a 
handful of grain so that my milk will come and 
my child may not die ! " 

All night long the feeble voices of several hun- 
dred children were heard in the church moaning 
for lack of food. To use the expression of Mon- 
signor Favier, it was like " the bleatings of a flock 
of lambs about to be sacrificed." But their cries 
diminished, for they were buried at the rate of 
fifteen in a single day. 

They knew that not far away in the European 
legations a similar drama was being enacted, but, 
needless to say, there was no communication be- 
tween them; and if any young Chinese Christian 
offered to go there with a message from the 
bishop asking for help, or at least for news, it 
was not long before they saw his head, with the 
note pinned to his cheek, reappear above the wall 
at the end of a rod garnished with his entrails. 

Not only did bullets rain by the hundreds every 
day, but the Boxers put anything that fell into 
their furious hands into their cannon, — stones, 
bricks, bits of iron, old kettles. The besieged had 
no doctors ; they hopelessly, and as best they could. 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 159 

bound up great horrible wounds, great holes in 
the breast. The arms of the voluntary grave- 
diggers were exhausted with digging places in 
which to bury the dead, or parts of the dead. And 
the cry of the infuriated mob went on, " Cha ! 
Cha!" (Let us kill, let us kill!) to the grim 
sounds of their iron gongs and the blasts of their 
trumpets. 

Mines went off in different localities, swallow- 
ing up people and bits of wall. In the gulf made 
by one of them fifty little babies in their cradles 
disappeared. Their sufferings at least were over. 
Each time a new breach was made the Boxers 
threw themselves upon it, and it became a yawn- 
ing opportunity for torture and death. 

But Ensign Henry was always there; with such 
of his sailors as had been spared he was seen rush- 
ing to the place where he was needed, to the exact 
spot where the most effective work could be done, 
— on a roof or on the crest of a wall, — and they 
killed and they killed, without losing a ball, every 
shot dealing death. Fifty, a hundred of them, 
crouched in heaps on the ground; priests and 
Chinese women, as well as men, brought stones, 
bricks, marble, no matter what, from the cathe- 
dral, and with the mortar they had ready they 
closed the breach and were saved again until the 
next mine exploded! 



i6o THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

But they came to the end of their strength, the 
meagre ration of soup grew less and less, and they 
could do no more. 

The bodies of Boxers, piled up along the vast 
enclosure which they so desperately defended, 
filled the air with a pestilential odor; dogs were 
attracted and gathered in moments of calm for a 
meal. During the latter part of the time they 
killed these dogs from the tops of the walls and 
pulled them in by means of a hook at the end of 
a cord, and their meat was saved for the sick and 
for nursing mothers. 

On the day when our soldiers at last entered 
the place, guided by the white-haired bishop stand- 
ing on the wall and waving the French flag, on 
the day when they threw themselves with tears of 
joy in one another's arms, there remained just 
enough food to make, with the addition of many 
leaves, one last meal. 

" It seemed," said Monsignor Favier, " as 

though Providence had counted the grains of 

* }> 
rice. 

Then he spoke once more of Ensign Henry. 

" The only time during the entire siege," he said, 

" the only time we wept was when he died. He 

remained on his feet giving his orders, although 

mortally wounded in two places. When the fight 

was over he came down from the breach and fell 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY i6i 

exhausted in the arms of two of the priests; then 
we all wept with the sailors, who had come up and 
surrounded him. He was so charming, simple, 
good, and gentle with even the humblest. To be 
a soldier such as he was, to make yourself loved 
like a little child, could there be anything more 
beautiful? " Then after a silence he added, '' And 
he had faith ; every morning he used to come with 
us to prayers and to communion, saying with a 
smile, ' One must be always ready.' " 

It is quite dark before I take leave of the bishop, 
on whom I had intended to pay a short call. All 
around him now, of course, everything is desolate 
and in ruins; there are no houses left, and the 
streets cannot even be traced. I go away with my 
two servants, our revolvers and one little lantern; 
I go thinking of Ensign Henry, of his glory, of 
his deliverance, of everything rather than the 
insignificant detail of the road to be followed 
among the ruins. Besides, it is not far, scarcely 
a kilometre. 

A violent wind extinguishes the candle in its 
paper sheath, and envelops us in dust so thick 
that we cannot see two steps in front of us; it is 
like a thick fog. So, never having been in this 
quarter before, we are lost, and go stumbling 
along over stones, over rubbish, over broken pot- 
tery, and human bones. 

II 



i62 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

We can scarcely see the stars for the thick cloud 
of dust, and we don't know which way to go. 

Suddenly we get the smell of a dead body and 
we recognize the ditch we discovered yesterday 
morning just in time to keep from falling into it. 
So all is well ; only two hundred metres more and 
we shall be at home in our glass palace. 



XI 

Friday, October 26. 

Leaving my palace a little late, I hasten to keep 
the appointment made for me by Li-Hung-Chang 
for nine o'clock in the morning. 

An African chasseur accompanies me. Follow- 
ing a Chinese outrider sent to guide us, we start 
off at a rapid trot through the dust and silence 
under the sun's white rays, along the great walls 
and marshy moats of the Emperor's Palace. 

When we get outside of the Yellow City noise 
and life begin again. After the magnificent soli- 
tude to which we have become accustomed, when- 
ever we return to everybody's Pekin, we are 
surprised to find such a roar among these humble 
crowds; it is hard to realize that the woods, the 
lakes, the horizons, which play at being the real 
country, are artificial things surrounded on all 
sides by the most swarming of cities. 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 163 

It is incontestable that the people are returning 
in crowds to Pekin. (According to Monsignor 
Favier, the Boxers in particular are returning in 
all kinds of costumes and disguises.) From day to 
day the number of silk gowns, blue cotton gowns, 
slanting eyes, and queues increases. 

We must move faster in spite of all the people, 
for it seems it is still some distance, and time is 
passing. Our outrider appears to be galloping. 
We cannot see him, for here the streets are even 
dustier than in the Yellow City; we see only the 
cloud of dust that envelops his little Mongolian 
horse, and we follow that. 

At the end of half an hour's rapid riding the 
dust cloud stops in front of a ramshackle old house 
in a narrow street that leads nowhere. Is it 
possible that Li-Hung-Chang, rich as Aladdin, 
the owner of palaces and countless treasures, one 
of the most enduring favorites of the Empress 
and one of the glories of China, lives here? 

For reasons unknown to me, the entrance is 
guarded by Cossack soldiers in poor uniforms but 
with naive rosy faces. The room into which I 
am taken is dilapidated and untidy ; there is a table 
in the middle of it and two or three rather well- 
carved ebony chairs; but that is all. At one end 
is a chaos of trunks, bags, packages, and bedding, 



i64 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

all tied up as though in preparation for flight. 
The Chinese who comes to the door, in a beautiful 
gown of plum-colored silk, gives me a seat and 
offers me tea. He is the interpreter, and speaks 
French correctly, even elegantly. He tells me 
that some one has gone to announce me to his 
Highness. 

At a sign from another Chinese he presently 
conducts me into a second court, and there, at the 
door leading into a reception-room, a tall old man 
advances to meet me. At his right and his left 
are silk-robed servants, both a whole head shorter 
than he is, on whose shoulders he leans. He is 
colossal, with very prominent cheek-bones, and 
small, very small, quick and searching eyes. He is 
an exaggeration of the Mongolian type, with a cer- 
tain beauty withal, and the air of a great person- 
age, although his furry gown of an indefinite color 
is worn and spotted. (I have been forewarned 
that in these days of abomination his High- 
ness believes that he should affect poverty.) The 
large shabby room where he receives me is, like 
the first one, strewn with trunks and packages. 
We take arm-chairs opposite each other, while 
servants place cigarettes, tea, and champagne on 
a table between us. At first we stare at each other 
like two beings from different worlds. 

After inquiring as to my age and the amount 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 165 

of my income (one of the rules of Chinese poHte- 
ness), he bows again, and conversation begins. 

When we have finished discussing the burning 
questions of the day, Li-Hung-Chang expresses 
sympathy for China and for ruined Pekin. " Hav- 
ing visited the whole of Europe," he says, " I have 
seen the museums of all your great capitals. Pekin 
had her own also, for the whole Yellow City was 
a museum begun centuries ago, and may be com- 
pared with the most beautiful of your own. And 
now it is destroyed." 

He questions me as to what we are doing over 
in the Palace of the North, informs himself by 
adroit questioning as to whether we are injuring 
anything there. He knows as well as I do what 
we are doing, for he has spies everywhere, even 
among our workmen; yet his enigmatical face 
shows some satisfaction when I confirm his knowl- 
edge of the fact that we are destroying nothing. 

When the audience is over, and we have shaken 
hands, Li-Hung-Chang, still leaning on his two 
servants, comes with me as far as the centre of 
the court. As I turn at the threshold to make my 
final bow, he courteously recalls to my memory my 
offer to send him my account of my stay in Pekin, 
— if ever I find time to write it. In spite of the 
perfect grace of his reception of me, due especially 



i66 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

to my title of " Mandarin of Letters," this old 
prince of the Chinese Arabian Nights' tales, in 
his threadbare garments and in his wretched sur- 
roundings, has not ceased to seem to me disturb- 
ing, inscrutable, and possibly secretly disdainful 
and ironical, all the time disguising his real 
self. 

I now make my way across two kilometres of 
rubbish to the quarters of the European legations 
in order to take leave of the French minister, who 
is still ill in bed, and to get from him his com- 
missions for the admiral, for I must leave Pekin 
not later than the day after to-morrow, and go 
back to my ship. 

Just as I was mounting my horse again, after 
this visit, to return to the Yellow City, some one 
from the legation came out and very kindly gave 
me some precise and very curious information 
which will enable me this evening to purloin two 
tiny shoes that once belonged to the Empress of 
China, and to take them away as a part of the pil- 
lage. On a shady island in the southern part of 
the Lake of the Lotus is a frail, almost hidden 
palace, where the sovereign slept that last ago- 
nizing night before her frantic flight, disguised as 
a beggar. The second room to the left, at the hack 
of the second court of this palace, was her room, 
and there, it seems, under a carved bed, lie two 




u 

< 

< 

< 



a. 
IS 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 167 

little red silk shoes embroidered with butterflies 
and flowers, which must have belonged to her. 

I return to the Yellow City as fast as I can, 
breakfast hurriedly in the glass gallery, — whence 
the wonderful treasures are already being carried 
to their new quarters to make way for the carpen- 
ters, who soon begin their work here, — and 
straightway depart with my two faithful servants, 
on foot this time, in search of the island, the palace, 
and the pair of small shoes. 

The one o'clock sun is burning the dry paths, 
and the cedars overhead are gray with dust. About 
two kilometres to the south of our residence we 
find the island without difficulty. It is in a region 
where the lake divides into various little arms, 
spanned by marble bridges with marble railings 
entwined with green. The palace stands there 
light and charming, half concealed among the 
trees, on a terrace of white marble. The roofs of 
green faience touched with gilt and the open-work 
walls shine forth with new and costly ornamenta- 
tion from amid the dusty green of the old cedars. 
It must have been a marvel of grace and daintiness, 
and it is adorable as it is, deserted and silent. 

Through the doors opening onto the white steps 
that lead up to it, a perfect cascade of debris of all 
kinds is tumbling, — boxes of imperial porcelains, 
boxes of gold lacquer, small bronze dragons up- 



i68 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

side down, bits of rose-colored silk, and bunches 
of artificial flowers. Barbarians have been this 
way, — but which ? Surely not our soldiers, for 
this part of the Yellow City was never placed in 
their hands; they are not familiar with it. 

The interior courts, from which at our approach 
a flock of crows rise, are in the same condition. 
The pavement is strewn with delicate, rather fem- 
inine things, which have been ruthlessly destroyed. 
And so recent is this destruction that the light 
stuffs, the silk flowers, the parts of costumes have 
not even lost their freshness. 

" At the back of the second court, the second 
room to the left! " Here it is! There remains a 
throne, some arm-chairs, and a big, low bed, carved 
by the hand of genius. Everything has been ran- 
sacked. The window-glass, through which the 
sovereign could gaze upon the reflections of 
the lake and the pink blossoms of the lotus, the 
marble bridges, the islands, the whole landscape 
devised and realized for her eyes, has been broken ; 
and a fine white silk, with which the walls were 
hung, and on which some exquisite artist had 
painted in pale tints, larger than nature, other 
lotus blossoms, languishing, bent by the autumn 
wind, and strewing their petals, has been torn in 
shreds. 

Under the bed, where I look immediately, is a 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 169 

pile of manuscript and charming bits of silk. My 
two servants, foraging with sticks, like rag-pickers, 
soon succeed in finding what I seek, — the two 
comical little red shoes, one after the other. 

They are not the absurd, doll-like shoes worn by 
the Chinese women who compress their toes; the 
Empress, being a Tartar princess, did not deform 
her feet, which were, however, very small by 
nature. No, these are embroidered slippers of 
natural shape, whose extravagance lies in the heels, 
which are thirty centimetres high and extend over 
the entire sole, growing larger at the bottom, like 
the base of a statue, to prevent the wearer from 
falling; they are little blocks of white leather of 
the most improbable description. 

I had no idea that a woman's shoes could take 
up so much space. How to get them away with- 
out looking like pillagers in the eyes of the ser- 
vants and guards we meet on the way back is the 
question ? 

Osman suggests suspending them by strings to 
Renaud's belt so that they will hang concealed by 
his long winter coat. This is an admirable scheme ; 
he can even walk — we make him try it — without 
giving rise to suspicion. I feel no remorse, and 
I fancy that if she, from afar, could witness the 
scene, the still beautiful Empress would be the 
first to smile. 



lyo THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

We now hasten our steps back to the Palace of 
the Rotunda, where I have scarcely two hours of 
daylight for my work before the cold and the night 
come on. 

Each time that I return to this palace I am 
charmed with the sonorous silence of my high 
esplanade and with the top of the crenellated wall 
surrounding it, — an artificial spot whence one 
commands an extended view of artificial landscape, 
the sight of which has always been forbidden, and 
which, until lately, no European has ever seen. 

Everything about the place is so Chinese that 
one feels as though it were the heart of the yellow 
country, the very quintessence of China. These 
high gardens were a favorite resort for the ultra- 
Chinese reveries of an uncompromising Empress 
who possibly dreamed of shutting her country off 
from the rest of the world, as in olden times, but 
who to-day sees her empire crumbling at her feet, 
rotten to the core, like her myriads of temples and 
gilded wooden gods. 

The magical hour here is when the enormous 
red ball, which the Chinese sun appears to be on 
autumn evenings, lights up the roofs of the Violet 
City before it disappears. I never fail to leave my 
kiosk at this hour to see once more these effects, 
unique in all the world. 

Compared to this, what barbaric ugliness is 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 171 

offered by a bird's-eye view of one of our Euro- 
pean cities, — a mass of ugly gables, tiles, and 
dirty roofs full of chimneys and stove-pipes, and, 
as a last horror, electric wires forming a black 
network! In China, where they are all too scorn- 
ful of pavements and sewers, everything which 
rises into the air, into the domain of the ever- 
watchful and protecting spirits, is always impec- 
cable. And this immense Imperial retreat, empty 
to-day, now displays for me alone the splendor of 
its enamelled roofs. 

In spite of their age, these pyramids of yellow 
faience, carved with a grace unknown to us, are 
still brilliant under the red sun. At each of the 
corners of the topmost one the ornaments simulate 
great wings ; lower down, toward the outside, are 
rows of monsters in poses which are copied and 
recopied, century after century, sacred and un- 
changing. These pyramids of yellow faience are 
brilliant. From far off, against the ashy blue sky, 
clouded by the everlasting dust, it looks like a city 
of gold; then, as the sun sinks, like a city of 
copper. 

First the silence of it all; then the croakings 
that begin the moment the ravens go to rest; 
then the death-like cold that wraps this magnifi- 
cence of enamel as in a winding-sheet as soon as 
the sun goes down. 



172 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

To-night again, when we leave the Rotunda 
Palace, we pass the Palace of the North without 
stopping, and go on to Monsignor Favier's. 

He receives me in the same white room, where 
valises and travelling-bags are lying about on 
the furniture. The bishop leaves to-morrow for 
Europe, which he has not seen for twelve years. 
He is going to Rome to see the Pope, and then to 
France, to raise money for his suffering missions. 
His great work of over forty years is annihilated, 
fifteen thousand of his Christian converts mas- 
sacred; his churches, chapels, hospitals, schools, 
are all destroyed, razed to the ground; his ceme- 
teries have been violated, and yet, discouraged at 
nothing, he wishes to begin all over again. 

As he conducts me across his garden I admire 
the beautiful energy with which he says, pointing 
to the damaged cathedral with its broken cross, 
which is the only building left standing, gloomily 
outlined against the evening sky : "I will rebuild, 
larger and higher, all the churches they have 
thrown down, and I hope that each movement of 
violence and hatred against us may carry Christi- 
anity one step further on in their country. Pos- 
sibly they will again destroy my churches; who 
knows? If so, I will build them up again, and we 
shall see whether they or I will be the first to weary 
of it." 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 173 

He seems very great to me in his determination 
and in his faith, and I understand that China must 
reckon with this apostle of the vanguard. 



XII 

Saturday, October 27. 

I WANTED to see the Violet City and its throne 
rooms once more before going away, and to enter 
it this time, not by round-aboat ways and back 
doors and secret posterns, but by the great avenues 
and gates that have been for centuries closed, so 
that I might try to imagine beneath the destruc- 
tion of to-day what must have been in former 
times the splendor of the sovereigns' arrival. 

No one of our European capitals has been con- 
ceived and laid out with such unity and audacity, 
with the idea of increasing the magnificence of a 
pageant always dominant, especially that of im- 
parting an imposing effect to the appearance of 
the Emperor. The throne is here the central idea. 
This city, as regular as a geometrical figure, seems 
to have been created solely to enclose and glorify 
the throne of the Son of Heaven, ruler of four 
hundred millions of souls; to be its peristyle, to 
lead up to it by colossal avenues which recall 
Thebes or Babylon. It is easy to understand why 
the Chinese ambassadors, who came to visit our 



174 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

kings in the times when their immense country 
was flourishing, were not particularly dazzled by 
the sight of the Paris of those days, of the Louvre 
or of Versailles. 

The southern gate of Pekin, by which the pro- 
cessions arrive, lies in the axis of this throne, once 
so awe-inspiring, and six kilometres of avenues, 
with gateways and monsters, lead up to it. When 
one has crossed the wall of the Chinese City by 
this southern gate, first passing two huge sanctu- 
aries, — the Temple of Agriculture and the Temple 
of Heaven, — one follows for half an hour the 
great artery that leads to a second boundary wall, 
that of the Tartar City, higher and more com- 
manding than the first. An enormous gate looms 
up, surmounted by a black dungeon, and beyond 
this the avenue goes on, flawlessly straight and 
magnificent, to a third gate in a third wall of 
a blood-red color, — the wall of the Imperial 
City. 

Even after entering the Imperial City it is still 
some distance to the throne to which one is ad- 
vancing in a straight line, — to this throne which 
dominates everything and which formerly could 
never have been seen; but here its presence is 
indicated by the surroundings. From this point 
the number of marble monsters increases; lions 
of colossal size grin from their pedestals at right 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 175 

and at left ; there are marble obelisks — monoliths 
encircled with dragons — with the same heraldic 
beast always seated at the summit, — a thin kind 
of jackal with long ears, which has the appear- 
ance of barking or howling in the direction of the 
extraordinary thing which is on ahead, namely, 
the throne of the Emperor. Walls are multiplied, 
— blood-colored walls thirty metres thick, — which 
cross the road, and are surmounted by queer roofs 
and pierced by low gates, — narrow ambushes that 
send a thrill of terror to your heart. The defend- 
ing moats at the foot of the walls have marble 
bridges, triple like the gates, and from here on the 
road is paved with superb big slabs crossing one 
another at an angle, like the boards of a parquetry 
floor. 

After it reaches the Imperial City, this avenue, 
already a league in length, is absolutely unfre- 
quented, and goes on even wider than before be- 
tween long regular buildings intended for soldiers' 
barracks. No more little gilded houses, no more 
small shops, no more crowds! At this last im- 
prisoning rampart the life of the people stops, 
under the oppression of the throne; and at the 
very end of this solitary roadway, watched over 
by the slender marble beasts surmounting the 
obelisks, the forbidden centre of Pekin becomes 
visible, the retreat of the Son of Heaven. 



176 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

The last wall which appears ahead of us — that 
of the Violet City — is, like the preceding ones, 
the color of dried blood; there are numerous 
watch-towers upon it, whose roofs of dark enamel 
curve up at the corners in wicked little points. 
The triple gates are too small, too low for the 
height of the wall, too deep and tunnel-like. Oh, 
the heaviness, the hugeness of it all, and the 
strangeness of the design of the roofs, so charac- 
teristic of the peculiarities of the yellow colossus ! 

Things must have begun to go to pieces here 
centuries ago; the red plaster of the walls has 
fallen in places, or it has become spotted with 
black; the marble of the obelisks and the great 
squinting lions could only have grown so yellow 
under the rains of innumerable seasons, and the 
green that pushes through wherever the granite 
is joined, marks with lines of velvet the design of 
the pavement. 

The last triple gates, given over since the de- 
feat to a detachment of American soldiers, will 
open to-day for any barbarian, such as I, who 
carries a properly signed permit. 

Passing through the tunnels, one enters an im- 
mense marble whiteness, — a whiteness that is 
turning into ivory yellow and is stained by the 
autumn leaves and the wild growth that has in- 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 177 

vaded this deserted spot. The place is paved with 
marble, and straight ahead, rising like a wall, is 
an extraordinary marble terrace, on which stands 
the throne room, with its sturdy blood-red col- 
umns and its roof of old enamel. This white en- 
closure is like a cemetery — so much green has 
pushed its way up between the paving-stones, — 
where the silence is broken only by the magpies 
and the crows. 

On the ground are ranged blocks of bronze all 
similar and cone-like in shape; they are simply 
placed there among the brown leaves and branches, 
and can be moved about as if they were ninepins. 
They are used during the formal entry of a pro- 
cession to mark the line for the flags and the 
places where even the most magnificent visitors 
must prostrate themselves when the Son of 
Heaven deigns to appear, like a god, on top of 
the marble terrace, surrounded by banners, and 
in one of those costumes with breastplate of gold, 
monsters' heads on the shoulders, and gold wings 
in the headdress, whose superhuman splendor has 
been transmitted to us by means of the paintings 
in the Temple of Ancestors. 

One mounts to these terraces by staircases of 
Babylonian proportions and by an '' imperial 
path," reserved for the Emperor alone, that is to 
say, by an inclined plane made of one block of 



12 



lyS THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

marble, — one of those untransportable blocks 
which men in the past possessed the secret of 
moving. The five-clawed dragon displays his 
sculptured coils from the top to the bottom of 
this stone, which cuts the big white staircase into 
two equal parts, of which it forms the centre, 
and extends right to the foot of the throne. No 
Chinese would dare to walk on this " path " by 
which the emperors descend, pressing the high 
soles of their shoes on the scales of the heraldic 
beast, in order not to slip. 

The room at the top, open to-day to all the 
winds that blow and to all the birds of heaven, 
has, by way of roof, the most prodigious mass of 
yellow faience that there is in Pekin, and the most 
bristling with monsters; the ornaments at the 
corners are shaped like big extended wings. In- 
side, needless to say, there is that blaze of reddish 
gold which always pursues one in Chinese palaces. 
On the ceiling, which is of an intricate design, 
dragons are everywhere entwined, entangled, in- 
terwoven; their claws and their horns appear, 
mingled with the clouds, and one of them, which 
is detached from the mass and seems ready to fall, 
holds in his hanging jaw a gold sphere directly 
above the throne. The throne, which is of red and 
gold lacquer, rises in the centre of this shadowy 
place on a sort of platform; two large screens 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 179 

made of feathers, emblems of sovereignty, stand 
behind it, and along the steps which lead up to 
it are incense-burners similar to those placed in 
pagodas at the feet of the gods. 

Like the avenues through which I have come, 
like the series of bridges and the triple gates, this 
throne is in the exact centre of Pekin, and repre- 
sents its soul; were it not for all these walls, all 
these various enclosures, the Emperor, seated there 
on this pedestal of lacquer and marble, could see 
to the farthest extremities of the city, to the far- 
thest openings in the surrounding walls ; the tribu- 
tary sovereigns who come there, the ambassadors, 
the armies, from the moment of their entrance into 
Pekin by the southern gate, would be, so to speak, 
under the inspiration of his invisible eyes. 

On the floor a thick carpet of imperial yellow 
reproduces in a much worn design the battle of 
the chimseras, the nightmare carved upon the ceil- 
ing; it is a carpet made in one piece, an enor- 
mous carpet of a wool so thick and close that one's 
feet sink into it as on a grassy lawn ; but it is torn, 
eaten by moths, with piles of gray dung lying 
about on it in patches, — for magpies, pigeons, 
and crows have made their nests in the roof, and 
on my arrival the place is filled with the whirring 
of frightened wings up high against the shin- 



i8o THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

ing beams, amongst the golden dragons and the 
clouds. 

The incomprehensible fact about this palace, 
to us uninitiated barbarians, is that there are 
three of these rooms exactly alike, with the 
same throne, the same carpet, the same orna- 
ments, in the same places; they are preceded by 
the same great marble courts and are constructed 
on the same marble terraces; you reach them 
by the same staircases and by the same imperial 
paths. 

Why should there be three of them? For, of 
necessity, the first conceals the two others, and in 
order to pass from the first to the second, or from 
the second to the third, you must go down each 
time into a vast gloomy court without any view 
and then come up again between the piles of ivory- 
colored marble, so superb, yet so monotonous and 
oppressive ! 

There must be some mysterious reason con- 
nected with the use of the number three. This 
repetition produced on our disordered imagina- 
tions an effect analogous to that of the three simi- 
lar sanctuaries and the three similar courts in the 
great Temple of the Lamas. 

I had already seen the private apartments of the 
young Emperor. Those of the Empress — for she 




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IN THE IMPERIAL CITY i8i 

had apartments here too, in addition to the frail 
palaces her fancy had scattered over the parks of 
the Yellow City — those of the Empress are less 
gloomy and much less dark. Room after room 
exactly alike, with large windows and superb yel- 
low enamelled roofs. Each one has its marble 
steps, guarded by two lions all shining with gold, 
and the little gardens which separate them are 
filled with bronze ornaments, heraldic beasts, phoe- 
nixes, or crouching monsters. 

Inside are yellow silks and square arm-chairs 
of the form consecrated by time, unchanging as 
China itself. On the chests, on the tables, a quan- 
tity of precious articles are placed in small glass 
cases, — because of the perpetual dust of Pekin, — 
and this makes them as cheerless as mummies and 
casts over the apartment the chill of a museum. 
There are many artificial bouquets of chimerical 
flowers of neutral shades in amber, jade, agate, 
and moonstones. 

The great and inimitable luxury of these palace 
rooms consists of the series of ebony arches so 
carved as to seem a bower of dark leaves. In 
what far-away forest did the trees grow that per- 
mitted such groves to be created out of one single 
piece? And by means of what implements and 
what patience are they able to carve each stem and 
each leaf of light bamboo, or each fine needle of 



i82 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

the cedar, out of the very heart of the tree, and to 
add to them birds and butterflies of the most ex- 
quisite workmanship? 

Behind the sleeping-room of the Empress a 
kind of dark oratory is filled with Buddhistic 
divinities on altars. An exquisite odor still re- 
mains, left behind her by the beautiful, passion- 
ate, elegant old woman who was queen. Among 
these gods is a small creature made of very old 
wood, quite worn and dull from the loss of gild- 
ing, who wears about his neck a collar of fine 
pearls. In front of him is a bunch of dried 
flowers, — a last offering, one of the guardian 
eunuchs informs me, made by the Empress to this 
little old Buddha, who was her favorite fetish, at 
the supreme moment before her flight from the 
Violet City. 

To-day I have reached this retreat by a very 
different route from the one I took on my first 
pilgrimage here, and in going out I must now 
pass through the quarters where all is walled and 
rewalled, the gates barricaded and guarded by 
more and more horrible monsters. Are there hid- 
den princesses and treasures here? There is al- 
ways the same bloody color on the walls, the same 
yellow faience on the roofs, and more horns, claws, 
cruel forms, hyena smiles, projecting teeth, and 
squinting eyes than ever; the most unimportant 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 183 

things, like bolts and locks, have features that 
simulate hatred and death. 

Everything is perishing from old age ; the stones 
are worn away, the wooden doors are falling into 
dust. There are some old shadowy courts that are 
given up to white-bearded octogenarian servants, 
who have built cabins, where they live like re- 
cluses, occupied in training magpies or in culti- 
vating sickly flowers in pots under the eyes of the 
everlasting grinning old marble and bronze beasts. 
No cloistered green, no monk's cell, was ever half 
so gloomy as these little courts, so shut in and so 
dark, overshadowed for centuries by the uncon- 
trolled caprices of the Chinese emperors. The in- 
exorable sentence, " Leave hope behind, all those 
who enter here," seems to belong here; as one 
proceeds, the passages grow narrower and more 
intricate ; it seems as though there were no escape, 
as though the great locks on the doors would re- 
fuse to work, as though the walls would close in 
upon and crush you. 

Yet here I am almost outside, outside the in- 
terior wall and through the massive gates that 
quickly close behind me. Now I am between the 
second rampart and the first, both equally ter- 
rible. I am on the road which makes a circle 
around this city, — a sort of ominous passageway 
of great length that runs between two dark red 



1 84 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

walls and which seems to meet in the distance 
ahead of me. Human bones and old rags that 
have been parts of the clothing of soldiers are 
scattered here and there, and one sees two or three 
crows and one of the flesh-eating dogs prowling 
about. 

When the boards which barricade the outside 
gate are let down for me (the gate guarded by 
the Japanese), I discover, as though on awaken- 
ing from a dreadful dream, that I am in the park 
of the Yellow City, in open space under the great 
cedars. 

XIII 

Sunday, October 28. 

The Island of Jade, on the Lake of the Lotus, is 
a rock, artificial perhaps, in spite of its mountain- 
ous proportions. Old trees cling to its sides, and 
old temples loom up toward the sky, while crown- 
ing all is a sort of tower or dungeon of colossal 
size and of a mysterious Baroque design. It may 
be seen from all points ; its excessively Chinese out- 
lines dominate Pekin, and high up on it stands a 
terrible idol whose threatening attitude and hideous 
smile look down upon the city. This idol our 
soldiers call the " big devil of China." 

This morning I am climbing up to visit this 
" big devil." 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 185 

A bridge of white marble across the reeds and 
lotus gives access to the Island of Jade. Both ends 
of the bridge are guarded, needless to say, by 
marble monsters who leer and squint at any one 
who has the audacity to pass. The shores of 
the island rise abruptly underneath the cedar 
branches, and one begins immediately to climb by 
means of steps and rock-cut paths. Among the 
severe trees is a series of marble terraces with 
bronze incense-burners and occasional pagodas, 
out of whose obscurity enormous golden idols 
shine forth. 

This Island of Jade, on account of its position 
of strategic importance, is under military occupa- 
tion by a company of our marines. 

As there is no shelter other than the pagodas, 
and no camp beds other than the sacred tables, our 
soldiers have had to put out of doors the entire 
population of secondary gods in order to make 
room to lie down on the beautiful red tables at 
night, and have left only the big, solemn idols on 
their thrones. So here they are by the hundreds, 
by the thousands, lined up on the white terraces 
like playthings. Inside the temples the guns of our 
men are lying about, and their blankets and their 
clothing hang on the walls, all around the big idols 
who have been left in their places. What a heavy 
smell of leather they have already introduced into 



1 86 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

these closed sanctuaries, accustomed only to the 
odor of sandalwood and incense! 



Through the twisted branches of the cedars the 
horizon, which is occasionally visible, is all green, 
turning to an autumn brown. It is a wood, an 
infinite wood, out of which here and there roofs 
of yellow faience emerge. This wood is Pekin; 
not at all as one imagines it, but Pekin seen from 
the top of a very sacred place where no Europeans 
were ever allowed to come. 

The rocky soil grows thinner and thinner as one 
rises toward the " big devil of China," as one 
approaches the peak of the isolated cone known as 
the Island of Jade. 

This morning I meet, as I climb, a curious band 
of pilgrims who are coming down; they are 
Lazarist missionaries in mandarin costume, wear- 
ing long queues. With them are several young 
Chinese Catholic priests who seem frightened at 
being there ; as though, in spite of the Christianity 
superimposed upon their hereditary beliefs, they 
were committing some sacrilege by their very 
presence in so forbidden a spot. 

At the foot of the dungeon which crowns these 
rocks is the kiosk of faience and marble where the 
" big devil " dwells. It is high up on a narrow 
terrace in the pure, clear air, from which one over- 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 187 

looks a mass of trees scarcely veiled to-day by the 
usual mist of dust and sun, 

I enter the kiosk where the " big devil " stands, 
the sole guest of this aerial region. Oh, horrible 
creature that he is! He is of superhuman size, 
cast in bronze. Like Shiva, god of death, he 
dances on dead bodies ; he has five or six atrocious 
faces whose multiplied grins are almost intolerable ; 
he wears a collar of skulls, and is gesticulating 
with forty arms that hold instruments of torture 
or heads severed from their bodies. . 

Such is the protecting divinity chosen by the 
Chinese to watch over this city, and placed high 
above all their pyramidal faience roofs, high above 
all their pagodas and towers, as we in times of 
faith would have placed the Christ or the Blessed 
Virgin. It is a tangible symbol of their profound 
cruelty, the index of the inexplicable cleft in the 
brain of these people ordinarily so tractable and 
gentle, so open to the charm of little children and 
of flowers, but who are capable all at once of glee- 
fully becoming executioners and torturers of the 
most horrible description. 

At my feet Pekin seems like a wood ! I had been 
told of this incomprehensible effect, but my ex- 
pectations are surpassed. Outside of the parks 
in the Imperial City, it has not seemed to me that 
there were many trees around the houses, that is. 



i88 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

in the gardens and in the streets. But from here 
all is submerged in green. Even beyond the walls 
whose black outlines may be seen in the distance 
there are more woods, — endless woods. Toward 
the east alone lies the gray desert which I came 
through that snowy morning, and toward the 
north rise the Mongolian mountains, charming, 
translucent, and purple against the pale blue sky. 
The great straight arteries of the city, drawn 
according to a singular plan, with a regularity and 
an amplitude to be found in none of the Euro- 
pean capitals, resemble, from the point where I 
stand, the avenues in a forest, — avenues bor- 
dered by various complicated, delicate little fret- 
work houses of gray pasteboard or of gilt paper. 
Many of these arteries are dead; in those which 
are still living, this fact is indicated from my point 
of view by the constant moving of little brown 
animals along the earth, recalling the migration 
of ants; these caravans, which move slowly and 
quietly away, are scattered to the four corners of 
China. 

A feeling that is akin to regret is mingled with 
my afternoon's work in the solitude of my lofty 
palace, — regret for what is about to end, for I 
am now on the eve of departure. And it will be an 
end without any possible beginning again, for if 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 189 

I should return to Pekin this palace would be 
closed to me, or, in any case, I should never again 
find here such charming solitude. 

Yet this distant, inaccessible spot, of which it 
once would have seemed madness to say that I 
should ever make it my dwelling-place, has already 
become very familiar to me, as well as all that 
belongs here and all that has happened here, — the 
presence of the great alabaster goddess in the dark 
temple, the daily visit of the cat, the silence of the 
surroundings, the mournful light of the October 
sun, the agonies of the last butterflies as they beat 
against my window-panes, the manoeuvres of the 
sparrows whose nests are in the enamelled roofs, 
the blowing of the dead leaves, and the fall of the 
little balsam needles on the pavement of the es- 
planade whenever the wind blows. What a strange 
destiny, when you think of it, has made me master 
here for a few days ! 

The splendors of our long gallery in the Palace 
of the North are a thing of the past. It is already 
divided by light wooden partitions which may be 
removed without difficulty if ever the Empress 
thinks of returning, but which, for the time being, 
cut it up into rooms and offices. There are still 
a few magnificent bibelots in the part which is to 
be the general's salon, but elsewhere it has all been 
simplified; the silks, the pottery, the screens, the 



190 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

bronzes, duly catalogued, have been removed to 
a storehouse. Our soldiers have even found Eu- 
ropean seats among the palace reserves, which 
they have taken to the future apartments of the 
staff to make them more habitable. They consist 
of sofas and arm-chairs, vaguely Henry II. in 
style, covered with old-gold plush that reminds 
one of a provincial hotel. 

I expect to leave to-morrow morning. When 
the dinner hour unites us once again, Captain C. 
and I, seated at our little ebony table, both feel 
a touch of melancholy at seeing how things have 
changed about us, and how quickly our dream of 
being Chinese sovereigns is over. 

Monday, October 29. 

I have postponed my departure for twenty-four 
hours in order to meet General Vayron, who re- 
turns to Pekin this evening, and undertake his 
commissions for the admiral. So I have an unex- 
pected half-day to spend in my high mirador, and 
hope for a last visit from my cat, who will find 
me no more in my accustomed place, neither to- 
morrow nor ever again. It is now growing colder 
each day, so that in any case my work-room would 
not be possible much longer. 

Before the doors of this palace close behind me 
forever I want to take a last walk into all the wind- 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 191 

ings of the terraces, into all the kiosks, so dainty 
and so charming, in which the Empress no doubt 
concealed her reveries and her amours. 



As I go to take leave of the great white goddess, 
— the sun already setting, and the roofs of the 
Violet City bathed in the red golds of evening, — 
I find the aspect of things about here changed ; the 
soldiers who were on guard at the gate have 
climbed to the top and are putting her house in 
order; they have carried off the thousand and one 
boxes of porcelains and girandoles, the broken 
vases and the bouquets, and have carefully swept 
the place. The alabaster goddess, deliciously pale 
in her golden robes, still smiles, more than ever 
solitary in her empty temple. 

The sun of this last day sets in little wintry 
clouds that are cold to look at, and the Mongolian 
wind makes me shiver in my thick cloak as I cross 
the Marble Bridge on my return to the Palace of 
the North, where the general with his escort of 
cavalry has just arrived. 

Tuesday, October 30. 

On horseback, at seven in the morning, a change- 
lessly beautiful sun and an icy wind. I start off 
with my two servants, young Toum, and a small 
escort of two African chasseurs, who will accom- 



192 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

pany me as far as my junk. We have about six 
kilometres to cover before reaching the dreary 
country. We first cross the Marble Bridge, then, 
leaving the great Imperial vi^ood, pass through 
ruined, squalid Pekin in a cloud of dust. 

At length, after going through the deep gates 
in the high outer ramparts, we reach the outside 
desert, swept by a terrible wind; and here the 
enormous Mongolian camels, with lions' manes, 
perpetually file past in a procession, making our 
horses start with fear. 

We reach Tong-Tchow in the afternoon, and 
silently cross it, ruined and dead, until we come 
to the banks of the Pei-Ho. There I find my junk 
under the care of a soldier, — the same junk that 
brought me from Tien-Tsin with all the necessities 
for our life on the water intact. Nothing has been 
taken during my absence but my stock of pure 
water, — a serious loss for us, but a pardonable 
theft at a time like this, when the river water is 
full of danger for our soldiers. As for us, we 
can drink hot tea. 

We call at the office of the commissary to get 
our rations and to have our papers signed; then 
we pull up our anchor from the infected bank that 
breathes of pestilence and death, and begin to float 
down the river toward the sea. 

Although it is colder than it was coming up, it 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 193 

is almost amusing to take up a nomadic life again 
in our little sarcophagus with its matting roof, and 
to plunge once more, as night falls, into the im- 
mense green solitude of the dark banks as we 
glide along between them. 

Wednesday, October 31. 

The morning sun shines on the bridge of a junk 
that is covered with a thin coating of ice. The 
thermometer marks 8° above zero, and the wind 
blows, cruel and violent, but health-giving, we 
feel sure. 

We have the swift current with us, so that the 
desolate shores, with their ruins and their dead, slip 
by much more rapidly than on our other journey. 
We walk on the tow-path from morning until 
night in order to keep warm, almost abreast of the 
Chinese who are pulling the rope. There is a ful- 
ness of physical life in the wind; one feels light 
and full of energy. 

Thursday, November i. 

Our boat trip lasts only forty-eight hours this 
time, and we have but two frosty nights to sleep 
under a matting roof through which the shining 
stars are visible, for toward the end of the second 
day we enter Tien-Tsin. 

Tien-Tsin, where we have to find a shelter for 
the night, is horribly repopulated since our last 

13 



194 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

stay here. It takes us almost two hours to row- 
across the immense city, working our way amongst 
myriads of canoes and junks. Both banks are 
crowded with Chinese, howHng, gesticulating, 
buying, and selling, in spite of the fact that few 
of the walls or roofs of the houses are left intact. 



Friday, November 2. 

In Spite of the cold wind and the dust, which 
continues to blow pitilessly, we arrive at Taku, — 
horrible city, — at the mouth of the river, by mid- 
day. But alas ! it will be impossible to join the 
squadron to-day; the tides are unfavorable, the 
bar in bad condition, the sea too high. Perhaps 
to-morrow or the next day. 

I had almost had time to forget the difficulties 
and uncertainties of life in this place, — the per- 
petual anxiety in regard to the weather, the con- 
cern for this or that boat laden with soldiers or 
supplies, which is running some danger outside or 
which may founder on the bar; complications and 
dangers of all sorts connected with the disembark- 
ing of troops, — a thing which seems so simple 
when looked at from a distance, but which is sur- 
rounded by a world of difficulties in such places. 



IN THE IMPERIAL CITY 195 

Saturday, November 3. 

En route this morning for the squadron out on 
the open sea. At the end of a half hour the sin- 
ister shore of China disappears behind us, and the 
smoke-stacks of the iron-clads begin to pour forth 
their black smoke upon the horizon. We fear we 
shall have to turn back, the weather is so bad. 

Dripping with fog, however, we arrive at last, 
and I jump aboard the Redoutahle, where my 
comrades, with no taste of high life in China to 
break the monotony, have been at work for forty 
days. 



V 

RETURN TO NING-HIA 

SIX weeks later. A cold and gloomy morn- 
ing. After having been at Tien-Tsin, Pekin, 
and other places, where so many strange and 
gloomy things have come to our notice, here we 
are back again at Ning-Hia, which we have had 
time to forget; our boat has gone back to its old 
moorings, and we return to the French fort. 

It is cold and dull; autumn, which is so severe 
in these parts, has brought with it sudden frosts; 
the birches and willows have lost all their leaves, 
and the sky is cold and lowering. 

The Zouaves who are living in the fort, and 
who came so light-heartedly only a month ago to 
take the place of our sailors, have already buried 
some of their number, who died of typhus or were 
shot. This very morning we have paid the last 
honors to two of them, killed by Russian balls in 
a particularly tragic manner, all the result of a 
mistake. 

The sandy roads strewn with yellow leaves are 
solitary. The Cossacks have evacuated their 



RETURN TO NING-HIA 197 

camps and disappeared to the other side of the 
Great Wall, in the direction of Manchuria. The 
agitation of the earlier days is over, as well as 
the confusion and the joyous crowds; all have 
gone into winter quarters in the places assigned 
to them, and as the peasants of the vicinity have 
not returned, their villages are abandoned and 
empty. 

The fort, though still ornamented with Chinese 
emblems, now bears a French name; it is called 
" Fort Admiral-Pottier." As we entered trumpets 
resounded for the admiral, and the Zouaves, ranged 
under the guns, looked with respectful sorrow at 
their chief, who had just honored with his pres- 
ence the funeral services of two soldiers. 

As soon as we cross the threshold we feel quite 
unexpectedly as though we were on French soil; 
it would be hard to say by what spell these Zouaves 
have made of this place and its surroundings in 
one short month, something which is like a bit of 
home. 

There have been no great changes; they have 
been content with removing Chinese filth, with 
putting the war supplies in order, with white- 
washing their quarters, and with organizing a 
bakery where the bread has a good smell, and a 
hospital where the many wounded, alas, and the 
sick, sleep on very clean little camp beds. All 



198 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

this at once and quite inexplicably creates a feel- 
ing that one is in France again. 

In the court of honor in the centre of the fort, 
in front of the door leading to the room where the 
mandarin is enthroned, two gun-carriages stand, 
unharnessed. Their wheels are decorated with 
leaves and they are covered over with white sheets, 
upon which are scattered poor little bouquets fas- 
tened on with pins. They are the last flowers 
from the neighboring Chinese gardens, — poor 
chrysanthemums and stunted roses touched by 
the frost, all arranged with touching care and 
kindly soldierly awkwardness, for the dead com- 
rades who lie there on these carriages in coflins 
covered with the French flag. 

It is a surprise to find this vast mandarin's 
room transformed by the Zouaves into a chapel. 
A strange chapel truly! On the whitewashed 
walls the vests of Chinese soldiers are fastened 
up and arranged like trophies with sabres and 
poniards, while the candlesticks that stand on 
the white altar-cloth are made of shell and bay- 
onets, — thus naively and charmingly does the 
soldier know how to manage when he is in 
exile. 

A military mass begins with trumpet blasts that 
make the Zouaves fall upon their knees; mass is 
said by the chaplain of the squadron, in mourning 



RETURN TO NING-HIA 



199 



dress, — a mass for the dead, for the two who are 
asleep on the wagons near the door decorated with 
late flowers. From the court Bach's Prelude, 
played on mufiled brass, rises like a prayer, the 
dominant note in this mingling of home and for- 
eign land, of funeral service and gray morning. 

Then they depart for a near-by enclosure which 
we have turned into a cemetery. Mules are har- 
nessed to the heavy gun-carriages, the admiral 
himself leading the procession along the sandy 
paths where the Zouaves form a double row, pre- 
senting arms. 

The sun does not pierce the autumn clouds that 
lower this morning over the burial of these chil- 
dren of France. It is cold and gloomy, and the 
birches and willows of the desolate country con- 
tinue to drop their leaves upon us. 

This improvised cemetery, surrounded by so 
much that is exotic, has also taken on a French 
air, — no doubt because of the brave home names 
inscribed on wooden crosses that mark the new- 
made graves ; because of pots of chrysanthemums 
brought by comrades to these sad mounds of earth. 
And yet just beyond the wall which protects our 
dead, that other wall which rises and is indefi- 
nitely prolonged into the gray November coun- 
try, is the Great Wall of China; and we are in 
exile far, frightfully far from home. 



200 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

Now the coffins have been lowered, each one to 
its hole, adding to the already long row of new- 
made graves; all the Zouaves approach in serried 
rank while their commandant recalls in a few 
words how these two fell. 

" It was not far from here. The company was 
marching without suspicion in the direction of a 
fort from which the Russian flag had just been 
hoisted, when suddenly balls began to rain like 
hail. The Russians behind their ramparts were 
new-comers who had not seen the Zouaves, and 
who mistook their red hats for the caps of the 
Boxers. Before they recognized their mistake 
several of our men lay on the ground; seven, 
one of them a captain, were wounded, and these 
two were dead. One of them was the sergeant 
who waved our flag in an effort to stop the 
firing." 

Then the admiral addresses the Zouaves, whose 
eyes, all in a row, are filled with tears; and as he 
steps forward upon the pile of loose earth so that 
he may reach the graves with his sword, and says 
to those who lie there, " I salute you as soldiers 
for the last time," a real sob is audible, heartfelt, 
and unrestrained, from the breast of a big hearty 
fellow who looks to be not the least brave among 
those in the ranks. 



RETURN TO NING-HIA 201 

Beside all this, how pitifully, how ironically 
empty are many of the pompous ceremonies at 
official burials with their fine discourses! 

In these times of weakness and mediocrity, 
when nothing is sacred and the future is full of 
fear, happy are they who are cut down where 
they stand ; happy are they who, young and pure, 
fall for the sake of adorable dreams of country 
and of honor, who are borne away wrapped in the 
modest flag of their country and greeted as sol- 
diers with simple words that bring tears to the 
eyes. 



VI 

PEKIN IN SPRINGTIME 

I 

Thursday, April i8, 1901. 

THE terrible Chinese winter which has 
pursued us for four months in this ice- 
filled gulf of Pekin is over, and here we 
are again at our wretched post, having returned 
with the spring to the thick and yellow waters at 
the mouth of the Pei-Ho. 

To-day wireless telegraphy, by a series of im- 
perceptible vibrations gathered at the top of the 
Redoutable's mast, informs us that the palace of 
the Empress, occupied by Field-Marshal von Wal- 
dersee, was burned last night, and that the Ger- 
man chief-of-staff perished in the flames. 

We were the only ones of all the allied squad- 
rons who received this notice, and the admiral at 
once ordered me to depart for Pekin to offer his 
condolences, and to represent him at the funeral 
ceremonies. 

There was just twenty-five minutes for my 
preparations, for the packing of luggage, great 




c 



h 



PEKIN IN SPRINGTIME 203 

and small; for the boat which must take me 
ashore cannot wait without risk of missing the 
tide, and so being unable to cross the bar of the 
river to-night. At the end of an hour my foot 
is on the soil of horrible Taku, near the French 
quarter, where I must spend the night. 



Friday, April 19. 

The railway destroyed by the Boxers has been 
rebuilt, and the train which I take this morning 
goes straight to Pekin, arriving there about four 
o'clock this afternoon, — a rapid and common- 
place journey, very different from the one I 
made at the beginning of winter by junk and 
on horseback. 

The spring rains have not begun ; the chill ver- 
dure of May, the sorghos and the young willows, 
later than they are in our climate, emerge with 
great difficulty from the dry soil and cast a hesi- 
tating shadow upon the Chinese plains, powdered 
with gray dust and burned by an already torrid 
sun. 

And how different is the appearance of Pekin! 
The first time we approached it, not by the super- 
human ramparts of the Tartar City, but by those 
of the Chinese City, less imposing and less sombre. 

To my surprise the train passes right through a 



204 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

fresh breach in the wall, enters the heart of the 
town, and lands one at the door of the Temple of 
Heaven. It seems that it is the same with the 
line from Pao-Ting-Fou ; the Babylonian enclos- 
ure has been pierced, and the railroad enters Pekin 
and comes to an end only at the imperial quarters. 
What unheard-of changes the Celestial Emperor 
will find if he ever returns ! — locomotives whist- 
ling and running right through this old capital of 
stability and decay. 

On the platform of the temporary station there 
was an almost joyous animation, and many Euro- 
peans, too, were on hand to meet the incoming 
travellers. 

Among the numerous officers who were there 
is one whom I recognize, although I never have 
seen him, and toward whom I advance spontane- 
ously, — Colonel Marchand, the well-known hero, 
who arrived in Pekin last November, after I had 
left. We take a carriage together bound for the 
French quarter, where I am to be entertained. 

The general quarters are a league away, still 
in the small Palace of the North, which was 
known to me in its Chinese splendor, and of 
whose earlier transformations I was a witness. 
The colonel himself lives near by in the Rotunda 
Palace, and we discover in the course of conver- 
sation that he has chosen for his private dwelling 



PEKIN IN SPRINGTIME 205 

the same kiosk which I used for my work-room 
last season. 

We make the trip by way of the grand avenue 
used by processions and emperors, through the 
triple gates in the colossal red walls under the 
murderous dungeon; over the marble bridges be- 
tween great grinning marble lions, and between 
ivory-colored obelisks surmounted by animals out 
of dreamland. 

And when, after the jolting, the noise, and the 
crowds, our carriage glides at last over the large 
paving-stones of the Yellow City, all this mag- 
nificence seems to me, on second sight, more 
than ever condemned, — a thing which has had 
its day. Imperial Pekin, in its everlasting dust, 
is now warmed by the rays of the April sun, 
yet it does not waken, does not return to life 
after its long, cold winter. Not a drop of rain 
has fallen yet, the ground is dust, the parks are 
dust. 

The old cedars, black and powdery, seem like 
the mummies of trees, whilst the green of the 
monotonous willows is just beginning to appear in 
the terrible ashen-white sunshine. 

The highest roofs rise toward a clear sky which 
is a mixture of heat and light, — pyramids of 
gold-colored faience whose age and dilapidation 
are more evident than ever amid the green and 



2o6 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

the birds'-nests. The Chinese storks have come 
back with the spring, and are perched in rows 
along the highest parts of the great roofs, on the 
precious tiles, among the horns and claws and 
enamelled monsters; they are small, motionless 
white creatures, — half lost in the dazzling white- 
ness of the sky, — who seem to be meditating on 
the destruction of the city as they contemplate the 
dismal dwellings at their feet. Really I find that 
Pekin has aged since autumn, aged a century or 
two; the April sunshine emphasizes all this and 
classes it definitely among the hopeless ruins. One 
feels that its end has come, and that there is no 
possible resurrection for it. 

Saturday, April 20. 

The funeral of General Schwarzhof, one of the 
greatest enemies of France, took place at nine 
o'clock this morning under a torrid sun; he came 
to a most unexpected end here in this Chinese 
palace just as he seemed about to become quarter- 
master-general of the German army. 

The entire palace was not burned, only that 
superb part where he and the marshal lived, — 
the apartments with the incomparable ebony wood- 
work and the throne room filled with chefs-d'ceuvre 
of ancient art. 

The casket has been placed in one of the great 



PEKIN IN SPRINGTIME 207 

rooms left untouched by the fire. In front of the 
doorway the white-haired marshal stands in the 
dangerous sunshine. Somewhat overcome, but 
preserving the exquisite grace of a gentleman and 
a soldier, he receives the officers who are presented 
to him, — officers from all countries in every kind 
of dress, who arrive on horseback, on foot, and in 
carriages, in cocked hats and in helmets decorated 
with wings or with feathers. Timid Chinese dig- 
nitaries who seem to belong to another world 
and another age of human history come also ; and 
gentlemen high in the diplomatic service are not 
lacking, brought here, by some anachronism, in 
old Asiatic palanquins. 

The Chinese character of the room is entirely 
concealed by branches of cypress and cedar, gath- 
ered from the imperial park by the German sol- 
diers and by our own; they cover the walls and 
ceiling and are strewn over the floor, exhaling a 
balsamic odor of the forest around the casket, 
which is half hidden by white lilacs from the 
Empress's garden. 

After the address by a Lutheran pastor, there 
is a chorus from Handel, sung from behind the 
branches by some young German soldiers with 
voices so pure and fresh that they are as restful as 
music from heaven. Tame pigeons, whose habits 
have been interfered with by the invasion of bar- 



2o8 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

barians, fly tranquilly above our plumed and gilded 
heads. 

At the sound of the military brasses the pro- 
cession begins to move, to make the tour of the 
Lake of the Lotus. All along the road a hedge, 
such as was never seen before, is formed by the 
soldiers of all nations; Bavarians are followed by 
Cossacks, Italians by Japanese, etc. Among so 
many rather sombre uniforms the red waistcoats 
of the small English detachment stand out sharply, 
and their reflections in the lake are like cruel and 
bloody trails. It is a very small detachment, al- 
most ridiculously so beside those that other coun- 
tries have sent; England is represented in China 
chiefly by Indian hordes, — every one knows, alas, 
with what a task her troops are elsewhere occu- 
pied at the present moment. 

The images of the lines of soldiers are reflected 
inversely in the water as well as the great desolate 
palaces, the marble quays, and the faience kiosks, 
built here and there among the trees; in certain 
places the lotus, which is beginning to come up 
from the slimy mud, shows above the surface its 
first leaves, of a green tinged with pink. 

A stop is made at a dark pagoda, where the 
coffin is temporarily left. This pagoda is so sur- 
rounded with foliage that it seems at first as though 
one were simply entering a garden of cedars, wil- 



PEKIN IN SPRINGTIME 209 

lows, and white lilacs; but soon the eye distin- 
guishes behind and above this verdure other 
rarer and more magnificent foliage, carved by the 
Chinese for their gods in the form of clusters of 
maple or of bamboo, which form under the ceiling 
a high arbor of gold. 

And here this curious funeral comes to an end. 
The groups divide, sorting themselves according 
to nations, and soon disperse among the hot 
wooded walks in the direction of their various 
palaces. 

The setting of the Yellow City seems vaster, 
more extensive than ever in the April light. One 
is bewildered by so much artificiality. How mar- 
vellous the genius of these people has been! To 
have created bodily, in the midst of an arid plain, 
a lifeless desert, a city twenty leagues in cir- 
cumference, with aqueducts, woods, rivers, moun- 
tains, and lakes ! To have created forest distances 
and watery horizons, to give their sovereigns illu- 
sions of freshness ! And to have enclosed all this, 
— which in itself is so large that one cannot see 
its boundaries, — to have separated it from the rest 
of the world, to have sequestered it, if one may 
use the word, behind such formidable walls! 

What their most audacious architects have not 
been able to create, nor their proudest emperors, 

14 



2IO THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

is a real springtime in this parched land, — a spring 
like ours, with its warm rains and its tremendously- 
rapid growth of grass, ferns, and flowers. Here 
there is no turf, no moss, no odorous hay; the 
springtime resurrection is indicated here by the 
thin foliage on the willows, by tufts of grass here 
and there, or by the blossoming of a sort of purple 
gillyflower that springs up out of the dusty soil. 
It rains only in June, and then there is a deluge 
flooding all things. 

Poor Yellow City, where we walk this morning, 
meeting so many people, so many armed detach- 
ments, so many uniforms ; poor Yellow City, closed 
to the world for so many centuries, an inviolable 
refuge for the rites and mysteries of the past ; city 
of splendor, oppression, and silence! When I saw 
it in the autumn it had an air of desertion which 
suited it ; but now I find it overrun by the soldiers 
of all Europe. In all the palaces and golden 
pagodas " barbarian " troopers drag their swords 
or groom their horses under the very noses of the 
great dreamy Buddhas. 

I saw to-day, at a Chinese merchant's, a collec- 
tion of the ingenious terra-cotta statuettes, which 
are a specialty of Tien-Tsin. Up to the present 
year, only inhabitants of the Celestial Empire have 



PEKIN IN SPRINGTIME 211 

been represented, — people of all social conditions 
and in every circumstance of life; but these, in- 
spired by the invasion, represent various Occi- 
dental warriors, whose types and costumes are 
reproduced with astonishing accuracy. The mod- 
ellers have given to the soldiers of certain Euro- 
pean countries, which I prefer not to designate, 
an expression of fierce rage, and have placed in 
their hands light swords or bludgeons, or whips 
raised as if to strike a blow. 

Our own men wear the red cap of the country, 
and are exceedingly French as to faces, with mous- 
taches made of yellow or brown silk; each one 
carries tenderly in his arms a little Chinese baby. 
They are posed in different ways, but all are in- 
spired by the same idea ; the little Chinese is some- 
times holding the soldier by the neck and embracing 
him ; sometimes the soldier is tossing the laughing 
child, or, again, he is carefully wrapping it in his 
winter cloak. Thus it is, in the eyes of these care- 
ful observers, that while others are rough and 
always ready to strike a blow, our soldier is the 
one who after the battle becomes the big brother 
of the enemy's little children ; after several months 
of practically living together, the Chinese have 
chosen this, and this alone, to characterize the 
French. 

Examples of these various statuettes ought to be 



212 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

scattered broadcast throughout Europe: the com- 
parison would be for us a glorious trophy to bring 
back from the war, and would close the mouths 
of numerous imbeciles in our own country.^ 

In the afternoon Marshal von Waldersee came 
to our headquarters. He was kind enough to say, 
what was in fact the truth, that the fire was extin- 
guished almost entirely by our soldiers, led by 
my friend Colonel Marchand. 

About eleven o'clock, on the evening of the fire, 
the colonel was dreaming on the high terrace of 
the Rotunda Palace, in a favorable spot from 
which to see the great red jet shoot superbly up 
from the mass of sculptured ebony and fine lacquer, 
as well as its reflection in the water. He was the 
first to reach the spot with a few of our men, and 
he was able to keep ten fire-engines going until 
morning, while our marines, under his orders, 
chopped down some of the blazing parts. It was 
owing to him, also, that they were able to recover 
General Schwarzhof's body. He constantly di- 
rected a stream of water toward the spot where 
he knew he had fallen, in default of which incin- 
eration would have been complete. 

1 A few days later, by order of the superior officers, those ac- 
cusing statues were withdrawn from the market and the models 
destroyed. Only the statuettes of the French remained on sale, and 
they have become very rare. 



PEKIN IN SPRINGTIME 213 

This evening I go to call on Monsignor Favier, 
who has just returned from his trip to Europe, 
full of confidence in his plans. 

How changed is all connected with the Catholic 
concession since the autumn! Instead of silence 
and destruction all is life and activity. Eight hun- 
dred workmen — almost all Boxers, the bishop 
says with a defiant smile — are at work repairing 
the cathedral, which is encased from top to bottom 
in bamboo scaffoldings. The avenues about it have 
been widened and planted with rows of young 
acacias, and countless improvements have been 
undertaken, as though an era of peace had begun 
and persecutions were over forever. 

While I am conversing with the bishop in the 
white parlor, the marshal arrives. He naturally 
refers again to the burning of his palace, and with 
delicate courtesy informs us that of all the sou- 
venirs which he lost in the disaster the one he most 
regrets is the Cross of the Legion of Honor. 



II 

Sunday, April 21. 

My easy mission over, there is nothing for me 
to do but to return to the Redotitable. 

But the general is kind enough to invite me to 
remain with him for a few days. He proposes 



214 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

that we pay a visit to the tombs of the emperors 
of the present dynasty, which are in a sacred wood 
about fifty miles southwest of Pekin, — tombs 
which never had been seen before this war, and 
which probably never will be seen after it is over. 
In order to accomplish this it is necessary to write 
in advance to warn the mandarins, and especially 
the commandants of the French posts stationed 
along the route, and there is quite an expedition 
to organize. So I asked the admiral for ten days, 
which he kindly granted me by telegraph, and am 
still here, a guest of the palace for much longer 
than I expected. 

This Sunday morning I go over to Monsignor's 
cathedral to take part in the grand mass for the 
Chinese. 

I enter at the left of the nave, which is the side 
for men, while the right side is reserved for women. 

When I arrive the church is already packed with 
Chinese, both men and women, kneeling close to- 
gether, and humming in an undertone a sort of 
uninterrupted chant that resembles the buzzing of 
an immense hive. There is a strong smell of musk, 
for both cotton and silk robes are saturated with it ; 
and besides that there is the intolerable odor that 
belongs to the yellow race, and which is something 
indescribable. In front of me, to the farthest ends 
of the church, men with bowed heads are kneeling. 



PEKIN IN SPRINGTIME 215 

I see backs by the hundreds with long queues hang- 
ing over them. On the women's side are bright 
silks, — a perfect medley of colors ; chignons, 
smooth and black as varnished ebony, with flowers 
and gold pins. Everybody sings with mouths 
almost closed, as if in a dream. Their devotion is 
obvious, and it is touching, in spite of the extreme 
drollery of the people; they really pray, and seem 
to do so with fervor and humility. 

Now comes the spectacle for which I confess 
I came, — the coming out from mass, — a great 
opportunity to see some of the beautiful ladies of 
Pekin, for they do not show themselves in the 
street, where only women of the lower classes walk 
about. 

There were several hundred elegant women who 
slowly came out, one after another, their feet too 
small and their shoes too high. Oh, the line of 
strange little painted faces and the finery that 
emerged from that narrow doorway! The cut of 
the pantaloons, the cut of the tunics, the combina- 
tion of forms and colors, must be as old as China, 
and how far it seems from us ! They are like dolls 
of another age, another world, who have escaped 
from old parasols or decorated jars, to take on real- 
ity and life this beautiful April morning. Among 
them are Chinese ladies with deformed toes and 



2i6 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

incredibly small, pointed shoes; their stiff, heavy 
masses of hair are pointed too, and arranged at 
the nape of the neck like birds' tails. There are 
Tartar ladies, belonging to the special aristocracy 
known as " the eight banners ; " their feet are nat- 
ural, but their embroidered slippers have stilt-like 
heels ; their hair is long, and is v^ound like a skein 
of black silk on a piece of board placed crosswise 
back of their heads, so that it forms two horizontal 
cones with an artificial flower at each end. 

They paint themselves like the wax figures at 
the hairdressers', — white, with a bright pink spot 
in the middle of each cheek; one feels that it is 
done according to custom and etiquette, without 
the least attempt at creating an illusion. 

They chatter and laugh discreetly ; they lead by 
the hand the most adorable babies (who were as 
good as little porcelain kittens during mass), 
decked out, and their hair dressed in the most com- 
ical fashion. Many of the women are pretty, very 
pretty; almost all seem decent, reserved, and 
comme il faut. 

The exit from the church was accomplished 
quietly, with every appearance of peace and happi- 
ness, in complete confidence in these surroundings 
so recently the scene of massacre and other horrors. 
The gates of the enclosure are wide open, and a 
new avenue, bordered by young trees, has been 



PEKIN IN SPRINGTIME 217 

laid out over what was not long since a charnel- 
house. 

A great number of little Chinese carts, uphol- 
stered in beautiful silk or in blue cotton, are 
waiting, their heavy wheels decorated with cop- 
per; all the dolls get in with much ceremony, and 
depart as though they were leaving some festive 
performance. 

Once more the Christians in China have won 
a victory, and they triumph generously — until the 
next massacre. 

At two o'clock to-day, as is the Sunday custom, 
the marine band plays in the court at headquarters, 
— in the court of the Palace of the North, which 
I had known filled with strange and magnificent 
debris in a cold autumn wind, but which at present 
is all cleared up as neat as a pin, with the April 
green beginning to show on the branches of the 
little trees. 

This semblance of a French Sunday is rather 
sad. The feeling of exile which one never loses 
here is made all the keener by the poor music, to 
which there are but few listeners ; no dressy women 
or happy babies, just two or three groups of idle 
soldiers and a few of the sick or wounded from 
the hospital, their young faces pale and wan, one 
dragging a limb, another leaning on a crutch. 



2i8 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

And yet there are moments when it does sug- 
gest home; the going and coming of the marines 
and of the good Sisters reminds one of some Httle 
corner of France ; beyond the glass galleries which 
surround this court rises the slender Gothic tower 
of the neighboring church, with a large tricolored 
flag floating from the top, high up in the blue sky, 
dominating everything, and protecting the little 
country we have improvised here in the haunts of 
the Chinese emperors. 

What a change has taken place in this Palace of 
the North since my stay here last autumn. 

With the exception of the part reserved for the 
general and his officers, all the galleries and all the 
dependencies have become hospital wards for our 
soldiers. They are admirably adapted to this pur- 
pose, for they are separated from one another by 
courts, and stand on high foundations of granite. 
There are two hundred beds for the poor sick sol- 
diers, who are most comfortably installed in them, 
with light and air at pleasure, thanks to the way 
this fantastic palace is built. The good Sisters 
with their white pointed caps move about with 
short, quick steps, distributing medicines, clean 
linen, and smiles. 

A small parlor is set apart for the head-nurse, 
— an elderly woman, with a fine, wrinkled face. 



PEKIN IN SPRINGTIME 219 

who has just received the cross, In the presence 
of all the troops, for her admirable services during 
the siege. Her little whitewashed parlor is alto- 
gether typical and charming, with its six Chinese 
chairs, its Chinese table, its two Chinese water- 
colors of flowers and fruits that hang on the wall, 
— all chosen from amongst the most modest of the 
Sardanapalian reserves of the Empress; added to 
these is a large plaster image of the Virgin, en- 
throned in the place of honor, between two jars 
filled with white lilacs. 

White lilacs ! The most magnificent bunches of 
them grow in all the walled gardens of this palace ; 
they are the sole joyful signs of April, of real 
spring under this burning sun; and they are a 
boon to the Sisters, who make regular thickets of 
them in honor of the Virgin and saints, on their 
simple altars. 

I had known all these mandarins' and gardeners' 
houses, which extend on among the trees, in com- 
plete disarray, filled with strange spoils, filth, and 
pestilential smells; now they are clean and white- 
washed, with nothing disagreeable about them. 
The nuns have established here a wash-house, there 
a kitchen where good broth is made for the in- 
valids, or a linen room, where piles of clean- 
smelling sheets and shirts for the sick are ranged 
on shelves covered with immaculate papers. 



220 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

Like the simplest of our sailors or soldiers, I 
am very much inclined to be charmed and com- 
forted by the mere sight of a good Sister's cap. It 
is no doubt an indication of a regrettable lack in 
my imagination, but I have much less of a thrill 
when I look upon the head-dress of a lay nurse. 

Outside of our quarters, in these unheard-of 
times for Pekin, Sunday is marked by the great 
numbers of soldiers of all countries who are cir- 
culating about its streets. 

The city has been divided into districts, each 
placed under the care of one of the invading 
peoples, and the different zones mingle very little 
with one another ; the officers occasionally, the sol- 
diers almost never. As an exception, the Germans 
come to us sometimes, and we go to them, for one 
of the undeniable results of this war has been to 
establish a sympathy between the men of the two 
armies; but the international relations of our 
troops are limited to this one exception. 

The part of Pekin that fell to France — several 
kilometres in circumference — is the one where 
the Boxers destroyed most during the siege, the 
one that is most ruined and solitary, but also the 
one to which life and confidence soonest returned. 
Our soldiers take kindly to the Chinese, both men 
and women, and even to the babies. They have 



PEKIN IN SPRINGTIME 221 

made friends everywhere, as may be seen by the 
way the Chinese approach them instead of running 
away. 

In the French part of Pekin every little house 
flies the tricolor as a safeguard. Many of the 
people have even pasted on their doors placards 
of white paper, obtained through the kind offices 
of some of our men, on which may be read 
in big, childish handwriting : '* We are Chinese 
protected by French " or " Here we are all Chinese 
Christians." 

And every little baby, naked or clothed, with his 
ribbon and his queue, has learned, smilingly, to 
make the military salute as we pass. 

At sunset the soldiers turn in, the barracks are 
closed. Silence and darkness everywhere. 

The night is particularly dark. About two 
o'clock I leave my quarters with one of my com- 
rades of the land force. Lantern in hand, we set 
forth in the dark labyrinth; challenged at first 
here and there by sentinels, then, meeting no one 
but frightened dogs, we cross ruins, cesspools, and 
wretched streets that breathe death. 

A very dubious-looking house is our goal. The 
watchmen at the gate, who were on the lookout, an- 
nounce us by a long, sinister cry, and we plunge 
into a series of winding passageways and dark 



222 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

recesses. Then come several small rooms with 
low ceilings, which are stuffy, and lighted only by 
dim, smoky lamps; their furnishings consist of a 
divan and an arm-chair ; the air, which is scarcely 
breathable, is saturated with opium and musk. 
The patron and the patroness have both the em- 
bonpoint and the patriarchal good nature which 
go along with such a house. 

I beg that my reader will not misunderstand 
me; this is a house of song (one of the oldest of 
Chinese institutions, now tending to disappear), 
and one comes here simply to listen to music, 
surrounded by clouds of overpowering smoke. 

Hesitatingly we take our places in one of the 
small rooms, on a red couch covered with red 
cushions embroidered with natural representations 
of wild animals. Its cleanliness is dubious and 
the excessive odors disturb us. On the papered 
walls hang water-colors representing beatified 
sages among the clouds. In one corner an old 
German clock, which must have been in Pekin at 
least a hundred years, ticks a shrill tick-tock. It 
seems as though from the moment of our arrival 
our minds were affected by the heavy opium 
dreams that have been evolved on this divan 
under the restraint of the oppressive dark ceil- 
ings; and yet this is an elegant resort for the 
Chinese, a place apart, to which, before the 



PEKIN IN SPRINGTIME 223 

war, no amount of money would admit any- 
European. 

Pushing aside the long, poisonous pipes that 
are offered us, we light some Turkish cigarettes, 
and the music begins. 

The first to appear is a guitarist, and as mar- 
vellous a one as could be found at Granada or 
Seville. He makes his strings weep songs of in- 
finite sadness. 

Afterwards, for our amusement, he imitates on 
his guitar the sound of a French regiment pass- 
ing, the muffled drums and the trumpets in the 
distance playing the '* March of the Zouaves." 

Finally, three little old women appear, stout 
and rather pale, who are to give us some plain- 
tive trios with minor strains that correspond with 
the dreams that follow opium smoking. But be- 
fore beginning, one of the three, who is the star, 

— a curious, very much dressed little creature, 
with a tiara of rice-paper flowers, like a goddess, 

— advances toward me on the toes of her tor- 
tured feet, extends her hand to me in European 
fashion, and says in French, with a Creole accent, 
and not without a certain distinction of manner, 
** Good evening, colonel." 

It was the last thing I expected ! Certainly the 
occupation of Pekin by French troops has been 
prolific in unexpected results. 



224 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

Monday, April 22. 

My journey to the Tombs of the Emperors takes 
some time to organize. The replies that come to 
headquarters state that the country has been less 
safe for the past few days, that bands of Boxers 
have appeared in the province, and they are wait- 
ing further instructions before consenting to my 
departure. 

In the meantime I make another visit in the 
hot spring sunshine to the horrors of the Chris- 
tian cemeteries violated by the Chinese. 

The confusion there is unchanged; there is the 
same chaos of melancholy marbles, of mutilated 
emblems, of steles fallen and broken. The human 
remains which the Boxers did not have time to 
destroy before they were routed lie in the same 
places; no pious hand has ventured to bury them 
again, for, according to Chinese ideas, it would 
be accepting the proffered injury to put them 
back in the ground; they must lie there, crying 
for vengeance, until the day of complete repara- 
tion. There is no change in this place of abomi- 
nation, except that it is no longer frozen; the sun 
shines, and here and there yellow dandelions or 
violet gillyflowers are blossoming in the sandy soil. 

As to the great yawning wells which had been 
filled with the bodies of the tortured, time has 



PEKIN IN SPRINGTIME 225 

begun to do its work; the wind has blown the 
dust and dirt over them, and their contents have 
dried to such an extent that they now form a 
compact gray mass, although an occasional foot 
or hand or skull still protrudes above the rest. 

In one of these wells, on the human crust that 
rises nearly to the top of the ground, lies the body 
of a poor Chinese baby, dressed in a torn little 
shirt and swathed in red cotton, — it is a recent 
corpse, hardly stiff as yet. No doubt it is a little 
girl, for the Chinese have the most atrocious scorn 
for girls; the Sisters pick them up like this along 
the roads every day, thrown while still alive upon 
some rubbish heap. So it was, no doubt, with this 
one. She may have been ill, or ill-favored, or 
simply one too many in a family. She lies there 
face downward, with extended arms and little 
doll-like hands. Her face, from which the blood 
has been running, is lying on the most frightful 
rubbish ; a few of the feathers of a young sparrow 
lie on the back of her neck, over which the flies 
are meandering. 

Poor little creature in her red woollen rags with 
her little hands outstretched ! Poor little face hid- 
den so that no one shall see it more before its final 
decomposition ! 



15 



VII 

THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 



Pekin, Friday, April 26, 1901. 

AT last the day has come for my departure 
for the sacred wood which encloses the 
imperial tombs. 

At seven o'clock in the morning I leave the 
Palace of the North, taking with me my last au- 
tumn's servants, Osman and Renaud, as well as 
four African riflemen and a Chinese interpreter. 
We start on horseback on animals chosen for the 
journey, which will be transported by rail when- 
ever we are. 

First, two or three kilometres across Pekin in 
the beautiful morning light, along great thorough- 
fares magnificent in their desolation, the route of 
pageants and of emperors; through the triple red 
gates, between lions of marble and obelisks of 
marble, yellow as old ivory. 

Now the railway station — it is in the centre 
of the city at the foot of the wall of the second 
enclosure, for the Western barbarians dared to 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 227 

commit the sacrilege of piercing the ramparts in 
order to introduce their submersive system. 

Men and horses go aboard. Then the train 
threads its way across the devastated Chinese 
City, and for three or four kilometres skirts the 
colossal gray wall of the Tartar City, which con- 
tinues to unfold itself, always the same, with 
the same bastions, the same battlements, without 
a gate, without anything, to relieve its monotony 
and its immensity. 

A breach in the outer wall casts us forth at last 
into the melancholy country. 

And for three hours and a half it is a journey 
through the dust of the plain, past demolished 
stations, rubbish, ruins. According to the great 
plans of the allied nations, this line, which actu- 
ally goes to Pao-Ting-Fu, is to be extended sev- 
eral hundred leagues, so as to unite Pekin and 
Hang-Chow, two enormous cities. It would thus 
become one of the great arteries of new China, 
scattering along its way the benefits of Occidental 
civilization. 

At noon we alight at Tchou-Tchou, a great 
walled city, whose high battlemented ramparts 
and two twelve-storied towers are perceived as 
through a cloud of ashes. A man is scarcely rec- 
ognizable at twenty paces, as in times of fog in 
the north, so filled with dust is the air; and the 



228 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

sun, though dimmed and yellow, reflects a heat 
that is overpowering. 

The commandant and the officers of the French 
port, which has occupied Tchou-Tchou since the 
autumn, were kind enough to meet me and to take 
me for breakfast to their table in the comparative 
freshness of the big dark pagodas where they with 
their men were installed. The road to the tombs,^ 
they tell me, which latterly has seemed quite safe, 
has been less so for a few days, a band of two 
hundred marauding Boxers having yesterday at- 
tacked one of the large villages through which I 
must pass, where they fought all the morning, — 
until the appearance of a French detachment who 
came to the aid of the villagers sent the Boxers 
flying like a flock of sparrows. 

" Two hundred Boxers," continued the com- 
mandant of the post, making a mental calcula- 
tion ; " let me see, two hundred Boxers : you 
will have to have at least ten men. You already 
have six horsemen; I will, if you wish, add four 
more." 

I felt that I ought to make some suitable ac- 
knowledgment, to reply that it was too much, that 
he overpowered me. Then under the eyes of the 

1 The reference here is not to the tombs of the Mings, which 
have for many years been explored by all Europeans on their way 
to Pekin, but to the tombs of the emperors of the reigning dynasty, 
whose very approaches have always been forbidden. 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 229 

Buddhas, who were watching us breakfast, we 
both began to laugh, struck all at once by the air 
of extravagant bluster in what we were saying. 
In truth it had the force of 

" Paraissez, Navarrois, Maures et Castillans ; " 

and yet, ten men against two hundred Boxers are 
really all that are necessary. They are tenacious 
and terrible only behind walls, those fellows; but 
in a flat country — it is highly probable, more- 
over, that I shall not see the queue of one. I ac- 
cept the reinforcement, — four brave soldiers, who 
will be delighted to accompany me; I accept so 
much the more readily, since my expedition will 
thus take on the proportions of a military recon- 
naissance, and this, it appears, will be a good 
thing just now. 

At two o'clock we remount our horses, for we 
are to sleep in an old walled town twenty-five kilo- 
metres farther on, called Lai-Chow-Chien (Chi- 
nese cities seem to claim these names; we know 
of one called Cha-Ma-Miaou, and another, a very 
large, ancient capital, Chien-Chien). 

We make a plunge and disappear at once in a 
cloud of dust which the wind chases over the plain, 
— the immense, suffocating plain. There is no 
illusion possible; it is the "yellow wind" which 
has arisen, — a wind which generally blows in 



230 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

periods of three days, adding to the dust of China 
all that of the Mongolian desert. 

No roads but deep tracks, paths several feet 
below the surface, which could only have been 
hollowed there in the course of centuries. A 
frightful country, which has, since the beginning 
of time, endured torrid heat and almost hyperbo- 
rean cold. In this dry, powdery soil how can the 
new wheat grow, which here and there makes 
squares of really fresh green in the midst of the 
infinite grays? There are also from time to time 
a few sparse clumps of young elms and willows, 
somewhat different from ours, but nevertheless 
recognizable, just showing their first tiny leaves. 
Monotony and sadness; one would call it a poor 
landscape of the extreme north, lighted by an 
African sun, — a sun that has mistaken the 
latitude. 

At a turn of the crooked road a band of 
laborers who see us suddenly spring up, are 
frightened, and throw down their spades to run 
away. But one of them stops the others, crying, 
" Fanko pink" (French soldiers). "They are 
French, do not be afraid." Then they bend again 
over the burning earth, and peaceably continue 
their work, looking at us as we pass by from the 
corners of their eyes. Their confidence speaks 
volumes on the somewhat exceptional kind of 




X 

5 

X 

o 
Z 



u 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 231 

" barbarians " our brave soldiers have known how 
to be, in the course of a European invasion. 

The few clumps of willows scattered over the 
plains almost always shelter under their sparse 
foliage the villages of tillers of the soil, — little 
houses of clay and of gray brick, absurd little 
pagodas, which are crumbling in the sunshine. 
Warned by watchmen, men and children come 
out as we pass to look at us in silence with naive 
curiosity; bare to the waist, very yellow, very 
thin, and very muscular; pantaloons of the ever 
similar dark blue cotton. Out of politeness each 
one uncoils and allows to hang down his back his 
long plaited hair, for to keep it on the crown of 
the head would be a disrespect to me. No women ; 
they remain concealed. These people must have 
much the same impression of us that the peas- 
ants of Gaul had when Attila, chief of the army, 
passed with his escort, except that they are less 
frightened. Everything about us is astonish- 
ing, — costumes, arms, and faces. Even my 
horse, which is an Arabian stallion, must seem 
to them a huge, unusual, superb animal beside 
their own little horses, with their big rough 
heads. 

The frail willows, through which the sunlight 
sifts upon the houses and tiny pagodas of these 
primitive lives, scatter over us their blossoms, like 



232 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

tiny feathers or little tufts of cotton-wool, which 
fall in a shower, and mingle with the never-ending 
dust. 

On the plain, which now begins again, level and 
always the same, I keep two or three hundred 
metres in advance of my little armed troop, to 
avoid the excessive dust raised by the trot of the 
horses' feet ; a gray cloud behind me when I turn 
around shows me that they are following. The 
** yellow wind " continues to blow ; we are pow- 
dered with it to such an extent that our horses, 
our moustaches, our uniforms have become of the 
color of ashes. 

Toward five o'clock the old walled town where 
we are to pass the night appears before us. From 
afar it is almost imposing in the midst of the 
plain, with its high crenellated ramparts so sombre 
in color. Near by, no doubt, it would show but 
ruin and decrepitude, like the rest of China. 

A horseman, bringing along with him the in- 
evitable cloud of dust, comes out to meet me. It 
is the officer commanding the fifty men of the 
marine infantry who have occupied Lai-Chou- 
Chien since October. He informs me that the 
general has had the kindly thought of having me 
announced as one of the great mandarins of Occi- 
dental letters, so the mandarin of the town is com- 
ing out to meet me with an escort, and he has 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 233 

called together the neighboring villages for a fete 
which he is preparing for me. 

In fact, here the procession comes, from out the 
crumbling old gates, advancing through the wasted 
fields, with red emblems and music. 

Now it stops to await me, ranged in two lines 
on each side of the road. And following the usual 
ceremonial, some one, a servant of the mandarin, 
comes forward, fifty feet in advance of the others, 
with a large red paper, which is the visiting-card 
of his master. He himself, the timid mandarin, 
awaits, standing, with the people of his house, 
having come down from his palanquin out of 
deference. I extend m}^ hand without dismount- 
ing, as I have been told to do, after which, in 
a cloud of gray dust, we make our way toward 
the great walls, followed by my cavaliers, and 
preceded by the procession of honor with music 
and emblems. 

At the head are two big red parasols, surrounded 
with a fall of silk like the canopies in a procession ; 
than a fantastic black butterfly, as large as an owl 
with extended wings, which is carried at the end 
of a stick by a child ; then two rows of banners ; 
then shields of red lacquered wood inscribed with 
letters of gold. As soon as we begin to march 
gongs commence to sound lugubriously at regular 
intervals as for a military salute, whilst heralds 



234 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

with prolonged cries announce my arrival to the 
inhabitants of the village. 

Here we are at the gate, which seems like the 
entrance to a cavern; on each side are hung five 
or six little wooden cages, each one containing a 
kind of black beast, motionless in the midst of a 
swarm of flies; their tails may be seen hanging 
outside the bars like dead things. What can it be 
that keeps itself rolled up like a ball, and has such 
a long tail? Monkeys? Ah, horrors, they are 
heads that have been severed from their bodies! 
Each one of these pretty cages contains a human 
head, beginning to grow black in the sunshine, 
with long, braided hair which has been intentionally 
uncoiled. 

We are swallowed up by the big gate, and are 
received by the inevitable grinning old granite 
monsters which at right and at left raise their 
great heads with the squinting eyes. Motionless, 
against the inner wall of the tunnel, the people 
press to see me pass, huddled together, climbing 
one upon the other, — yellow nakedness, blue cotton 
rags, ugly faces. The dust fills and obscures this 
vaulted passage where men and horses press, en- 
veloped in the same gloom. 

We have entered old provincial China, belong- 
ing to another era entirely unknown to us. 




Copyright, 1901, by J. C- Hetnment 

Non-commissioned Officers and Men of French 
Artillery and Marines 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 235 



II 



Ruin and dilapidation within the walls, as I ex- 
pected, not from any fault of the Boxers or of 
the Allies, for the war did not come near here, 
but as a result of decay, of the falling into dust 
of this old China, our elder by more than thirty 
centuries. 

The gong in front of me continues to sound 
lugubriously at fixed intervals, and the heralds con- 
tinue to announce me to the people by prolonged 
cries, resounding through the little powdery streets 
under the still burning evening sun. One sees 
unused land and cultivated fields. Here and 
there granite monsters, defaced, shapeless, half 
buried, worn by years, indicate what was formerly 
the entrance to a palace. 

Before a door which surmounts a tricolored 
pavilion the procession stops, and I dismount. For 
seven or eight months our fifty soldiers of the 
marine infantry have been quartered here, spend- 
ing a whole long winter at La'i-Chou-Chien, sep- 
arated from the rest of the world by snow and 
icy steppes, and leading a Crusoe-like existence 
in the midst of the most perplexing surroundings. 

It is a surprise and a joy to come among them, 
to see again their honest home faces, after all the 



236 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

yellow ones we have met along the road, darting 
sharp enigmatical glances at us. This French 
quarter is like a bit of life, gaiety, and youth in 
the midst of mummified old China. 

It is plain that the winter has been good for our 
soldiers, for the look of health is on their cheeks. 
They have organized themselves with a comical 
and somewhat marvellous ingenuity, creating lav- 
atories, douche rooms, a schoolroom where they 
teach French to the little Chinese, and even a 
theatre. Living in intimate comradeship with the 
people of the town, who will before long be unwill- 
ing to see them go, they cultivate vegetable gar- 
dens, raise chickens and sheep, and bring up little 
ravens by hand like orphan babies. 

It is arranged that I should sleep at the house of 
the mandarin after having supped at the French 
post. So at nine o'clock they come for me to 
conduct me to the " Yamen " with lanterns of state, 
decorated in a very Chinese fashion and as big as 
barrels. 

The Chinese Yamen is always of tremendous 
extent. In the cool night air, picking my way by 
the light of lanterns, amongst huge stones and be- 
tween rows of servants, I pass through a series of 
courts two hundred metres long, with I don't 
know how many ruined porticoes and peristyles 
with shaky steps, before reaching the crumbling 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 237 

and dusty lodging which the mandarin intends for 
me, — a separate building in the midst of a sort 
of yard, and surrounded by old trees with shape- 
less trunks. There, under the smoky rafters, I 
have a great room, with whitewashed walls, con- 
taining in the centre a platform with seats like a 
throne, also some heavy ebony arm-chairs; and as 
wall decorations some rolls of silk spread out, on 
which poetry, in Manchou characters, is written. 
In the wing on the left is a small bedroom for my 
two servants, and on the right one for me with 
window-panes of rice paper. On a platform is 
a very hard bed with covers of red silk, and, lastly, 
an incense burner, in which little sticks of incense 
are burning. All this is rural, naive, and super- 
annuated, antiquated even for China. 

My timid host, in ceremonial costume, awaits 
me at the entrance, and makes me take a seat with 
him on the central throne, where he offers me the 
obligatory tea in porcelain a hundred years old. 
Then he had the discretion to bring the audience 
to a close and to bid me good-night. As he with- 
drew he told me not to be disturbed if I heard a 
good deal of coming and going over my head, as 
the space above was frequented by rats. Neither 
was I to be disturbed if I heard on the other side 
of my paper window-panes people walking up and 
down in the yard playing castanets; they would 



238 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

be the night watchmen, thus informing me that 
they were not asleep, and were doing their duty. 

" There are many brigands in this country," he 
added ; " the city with its high walls closes its 
gates at sunset, but the workmen going to the 
fields before daybreak have made a hole in the ram- 
parts, — this the brigands have discovered, and 
do not hesitate to enter by it." 

When this deep-bowing mandarin was gone, 
and I was alone in the darkness of my dwelling, 
in the heart of an isolated city whose gates were 
guarded by human heads in cages, I felt myself 
at an infinite distance away, separated from my 
own world by immense space as well as by time, 
by ages; it seemed to me that I was going to 
sleep amongst a people at least. a thousand years 
behind our era. 

Saturday, April 27. 

The crowing of cocks, the singing of little birds 
on my roof, awoke me in my strange old room; 
and by the light that came in through my paper 
panes I guessed that the warm sun was shining out 
of doors. 

Osman and Renaud, who were up before me, 
came to tell me that they were hurriedly making 
great preparations in the courtyard of the Yamen 
in order to give me a fete, a morning fete, because 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 239 

we had to continue our route to the imperial tombs 
soon after the mid-day meal. 

It began about nine o'clock. I was given a seat 
in an arm-chair beside the mandarin, who seemed 
weighed down beneath his silken gowns. In front 
of me, in the dazzling sunshine, was the series of 
courts with porticoes of irregular outline and old 
monsters on pedestals. A crowd of Chinese — 
always the men alone, it is understood — have 
assembled in their eternal blue rags. The yellow 
wind which had died down at night, as usual, 
begins to blow again, and to whiten the heavens 
with dust. The acacias and the monotonous wil- 
lows, which are almost the only trees scattered 
over this northern China, show here and there on 
their slender old branches little pale-green leaves 
just barely out. 

First comes the slow, the very slow, passing of 
a band with many gongs, cymbals, and bells all 
muffled ; the melody seems to be carried by a sweet, 
melancholy, and persistent unison of flutes, — large 
flutes, with a deep tone, some of which have several 
tubes, and resemble sheaves of wheat. It is sweet 
and lulling, exquisite to hear. 

Now the musicians seat themselves near us, in 
a circle, to open the fete. All at once the rhythm 
changes, grows more rapid, and becomes a dance. 
Then from afar, from the retirement of the courts 



240 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

and the old porticoes, one sees above the heads of 
the crowd, through the dust that grows thicker 
and thicker, a troop of dancing creatures two or 
three times taller than men, swinging along, swing- 
ing in regular time and playing citherns, fanning 
themselves, and comporting themselves generally 
in an exaggerated, nervous epileptic manner. — 
Giants? Jumping Jacks? What can they be? 
They are approaching rapidly with long, leaping 
steps, and here they are in front of us. Ah, they 
are on stilts, enormously high stilts. They are 
taller on their wooden legs than the shepherds 
of the Landes, and they hop like big grasshoppers. 
They are in costume and made up, — painted, 
rouged. They have wigs, false beards; they rep- 
resent gods, genii such as one sees on old pagodas ; 
they represent princesses also, with beautiful robes 
of embroidered silk, with cheeks too pink and 
white, and with artificial flowers in their chignons, 
— princesses all very tall, fanning themselves in an 
exaggerated way, and swinging along like the rest 
of the company, with the same regular, continuous 
movement, as persistent as the pendulum of a 
clock. 

All these stilt-walkers, it seems, are merely 
young men of a neighboring village, who have 
formed themselves into a gymnastic society, and 
who do this for amusement. In the smallest vil- 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 241 

lages in the interior of China, centuries, yes, thou- 
sands of years, before the custom reached us, the 
men — fathers and sons — began to devote them- 
selves passionately to feats of strength and skill, 
founding rival societies, some becoming acrobats, 
others balancers, or jugglers, and organizing con- 
tests. It is especially during the long winters that 
they exercise, when all is frozen, and when each 
little human group must live alone in the midst of 
a desert of snow. 

In fact, in spite of their white wigs and their 
centenarian beards, it is obvious that all these 
people are young, very young, with childlike smiles. 
They smile naively, these droll, pleasant princesses 
with the over-long legs, whose fan motions are so 
excited and who dance more and more disjointedly, 
bending, reversing, and shaking their heads and 
their bodies in a frenzy. They smile naively, these 
old men with children's faces; they play the cithern 
or the tambourine as though they were possessed. 
The persistent unison of the flutes seems to be- 
witch them, to put them into a special condition 
of madness, expressed by more and more convul- 
sive movements. 

At a given signal each one stands on a single 
stilt, the other leg raised, the second stilt thrown 
back over the shoulder; and by prodigies of bal- 
ancing they dance harder than ever, like mar- 

16 



14^ THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

ionettes whose springs are out of order, whose 
mechanism is about to break down. Then bars 
two metres high are brought in, and they jump 
over them, every one taking part, inckiding the 
princesses, the old men, and the genii, all keeping 
up an incessant play of fans and a beating of 
tambourines. 

At last, when they can hold out no longer and 
go and lean against the porticoes among the old 
acacias and willows, another company just like 
the first comes forward and begins again, to the 
same tune, a similar dance. They represent the 
same persons, the same genii, the same long- 
bearded gods, the same beautiful mincing dames. 
In their accoutrements, so unknown to us, and with 
their curiously wrinkled faces, these dancers are 
the incarnation of ancient mythological dreams 
dreamed long ago in the dark ages by human 
beings at an infinite distance from us; and these 
customs are handed down from generation to 
generation, and from one end of the country 
to the other in that unchanging way in which 
rites, forms, and property in China are invariably 
transmitted. 

This fete, this dance, extremely novel as it is, 
retains its village, its rustic character, and is as 
simple as any truly rural entertainment. 

They finally cease jumping the bars, and now 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 243 

two terrible beasts come forth, one red and one 
green. They are big, heraldic dragons at least 
twenty metres long, with the raised heads, the 
yawning mouths, the horns, and claws, and hor- 
rible squinting eyes that everybody knows. They 
advance rapidly, throwing themselves onto the 
shoulders of the crowd with the undulations of a 
reptile; they are light, however, made of paste- 
board, covered with some sort of stuff, and each 
beast is supported in the air by means of sticks, by 
a dozen skilful young men who have a subtle knack 
of giving to their movements a serpentine effect. 
A sort of master of the ballet precedes them, 
holding in his hand a ball which they never lose 
sight of, and which he uses as the leader of an 
orchestra uses his baton, to guide the writhings 
of the monsters. 

The two great creatures content themselves with 
dancing before me, to the sound of flutes and 
gongs, in the centre of the circle of Chinese, which 
is extended in order to make room for them. At 
length the struggle becomes quite terrible, while 
the gongs and cymbals rage. They become en- 
tangled, they roll on top of one another, they drag 
their long rings in the dust, and then, all at once, 
with a bound they get up, as though in a passion, 
and stand shaking their enormous heads at one 
another, trembling with rage. The ballet master, 



244 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

nervously moving his director's ball, throws him- 
self about and rolls his ferocious eyes. 

The dust on the crowd grows thicker and thicker, 
and on the invisible dragon-bearers; it rises in 
clouds, rendering this battle between the red beast 
and the green beast almost fantastic. The sun 
burns as in a tropical country, and yet the sad 
Chinese April, anaemic from such a drought fol- 
lowing the frozen winter, is barely heralded by 
the tender color of the few tiny leaves on the old 
willows and acacias of the court. 

After breakfast some of the mandarins of the 
plain from the neighboring villages arrive, pre- 
ceded by music and bringing me pastoral offerings, 
— baskets of preserved grapes, baskets of pears, 
live chickens in cages, and a jar of rice-wine. 
They wear the official winter head-dress, with a 
raven's quill, and have on gowns of dark silk with 
squares of gold embroidery, in the centre of which 
is depicted, surrounded by clouds, the invariable 
stork flying toward the moon. They are nearly all 
dried-up old men with gray beards and drooping 
gray moustaches. We have great tchinchins with 
them, profound bows, extravagant compliments, 
handshakings in which one feels the scratch of 
over-long nails, the touch of thin old fingers. 

At two o'clock I remount with my men and start 
off through the dilapidated streets, preceded by the 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 245 

same procession as upon my arrival. The gongs 
are muffled, the heralds sound their cries. Behind 
me my host, the mandarin, follows in his palanquin, 
accompanied by the troop on stilts and by the 
enormous dragons. 

As we leave the village, and enter the deep tun- 
nelled gateway where the crowd is already as- 
sembled to see us, the whole procession is engulfed 
with us, — the long, striding princesses, the gods 
who play the cithern or the tambourine, the red 
beast, and the green beast. In the semi-obscurity 
of the arched way, to the noise of all the citherns 
and of all the gongs, in the clouds of black dust 
which blind us, there is a compact melee, where our 
horses prance and jump, troubled by the noise and 
terrified by the two frightful monsters undulating 
above our heads. 

After conducting us a quarter of a league beyond 
the walls, the procession leaves us at last, and we 
find silence again on the burning plain, where we 
have about twenty kilometres to go through the 
dust and the " yellow wind " before reaching 
Y-Tchou, another old walled city which is to be 
our halting-place for the night. 

Not until to-morrow do we arrive at the tombs. 



246 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 



III 



The plain resembles that of yesterday, yet it is a 
little more green and wooded. The wheat, sown 
in rows, as with us, grows miraculously in this 
soil, made up of dust and cinders though it appar- 
ently is. Everything seems less desolate as one 
gets farther away from the region of Pekin, and 
ascends almost imperceptibly towards those great 
mountains of the west, which are appearing with 
greater and greater distinctness in front of us. 
The " yellow wind," too, blows with less severity, 
and when it dies down for a few moments, when 
the blinding dust decreases, it is like the country 
in the north of France, with its ploughed fields 
and clumps of elms and willows. One forgets 
that this is the heart of China, on the other side 
of the globe, and one expects to see peasants from 
home pass along the paths. But the few toilers 
who are bending over the earth have long braids, 
coiled about their heads like crowns, and their 
bare backs are saffron-colored. 

All is peace in these sunshine-flooded fields, in 
these villages built in the scanty shade of the wil- 
lows. The people seem to live happily, cultivating 
the friendly soil in primitive fashion, guided by 
the customs of five thousand years ago. Aside 













*j < « ' ; 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 247 

from the possible exactions of a few mandarins, 
— and there are many who are kind, — these 
Chinese peasants still live in the Golden Age, and 
I can hardly conceive of their accepting the joys 
of the " New China " dreamed of by Occidental 
reformers. Up to this time, it is true, the inva- 
sion has scarcely reached them; in this part of 
the country, occupied solely by the French, our 
troops have never played any other role than 
that of defender of the villagers against pillaging 
Boxers. Ploughing, sowing, all the work of the 
fields, has been quietly done in season, and it is 
impossible not to be struck with the very different 
look of other parts of the country which I will not 
designate, where there has been a reign of terror, 
and where the fields have been destroyed and have 
become desert steppes. 

At about half-past four, against a background 
of mountains which are beginning to look tall to 
us, a village appears, the first sight of which, like 
that of yesterday, is rather formidable with its 
high crenellated ramparts. 

A horseman comes out to meet me once more, 
like yesterday, and again it is the captain in com- 
mand of the post of marine infantry stationed 
there since last autumn. 

Watchers stationed on the walls have perceived 



248 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

us from afar by the cloud of dust our horses raise 
on the plain. As soon as we approach we see 
emerging from the old gates the official proces- 
sion coming to meet us, with the same emblems 
as at Lai-Chou-Chien, — the same big butterfly, 
the same red parasols, the same shields and ban- 
ners. Each Chinese ceremonial has been for cen- 
turies regulated by unvarying usages. 

However, the people who receive me to-day are 
much more elegant and undoubtedly richer than 
those of yesterday. The mandarin, who comes 
down from his sedan chair to await me at the side 
of the road, having sent his red paper visiting- 
card on before him a hundred feet or so, stands 
surrounded by a group of important-looking per- 
sons in sumptuous silk robes. He himself is a 
distinguished-looking old man, who wears in his 
hat the peacock feather and the sapphire button. 
There is an enormous crowd waiting to see me 
make my entrance to the funereal sound of the 
gongs and the prolonged cries of the heralds. On 
the top of the ramparts figures may be seen peer- 
ing through the battlements with their small 
oblique eyes, and even in the dim gateways double 
rows of yellow men crowd against the walls. My 
interpreter confesses, however, that there is a gen- 
eral disappointment. " If he is a man of letters," 
they ask, "why is he dressed like a colonel?" 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 249 

(The scorn of the Chinese for the mihtary profes- 
sion is well known.) My horse, however, some- 
what restores my prestige. Tired as the poor 
Algerian animal is, he still has a certain carriage of 
the head and tail when he feels that he is observed, 
and especially if he hears the sound of the gong. 

Y-Tchou, the city wherein we find ourselves, 
shut in by walls thirty feet high, still contains fif- 
teen thousand inhabitants in spite of its deserted 
districts and its ruins. There is a great crowd 
along our route, in all the little streets and in 
front of the little old shops where antediluvian 
occupations are carried on. It was from this 
very place that the terrible movement of hatred 
against foreigners was launched last year. In a 
convent of Bonze nuns in the neighboring moun- 
tain the war of extermination was first preached, 
and these people who receive me so kindly were 
the first Boxers. Ardent converts for the moment 
to the French cause, they cheerfully decapitate 
those of their own people who refuse to come to 
terms, and put their heads in the little cages which 
adorn the gates of their city; but if the wind 
should change to-morrow, I should see myself cut 
up by them to the tune of the same old gongs and 
with the same enthusiasm which they put into my 
reception. When I have taken possession of the 
house set apart for me, back of the residence of 



250 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

the mandarin at the end of an interminable avenue 
of old porticoes, and monsters who show me their 
teeth in tiger-like smiles, a half-hour of day- 
light still remains, and I go to pay a visit to a 
young prince of the imperial family, stationed at 
Y-Tchou in the interests of the venerable tombs. 

First comes his garden, melancholy in the April 
twilight. It lies between walls of gray brick, and 
is very much shut in for a town already so walled. 
Gray also is the rockwork outlining the small 
squares or lozenges, where big red, lavender, and 
pink peonies flourish. These, unlike our own, are 
very fragrant, and to-night fill the air of this 
gloomy enclosure with an excessive odor. There 
are also rows of little porcelain jars inhabited by 
tiny fish — regular monstrosities — red fish or 
black fish with cumbersome fins and extravagant 
tails, giving the effect of a flounced petticoat; 
fish with enormous terrifying eyes, which pro- 
trude like those of the heraldic dragons and which 
are the result of I do not know what mysterious 
form of breeding. The Chinese, who torture the 
feet of their women, also deform their trees, so 
that they remain dwarfed and crooked. They 
train their fruits to resemble animals, and their 
animals to look like the chimseras of a dream. 

It is already dark in the prince's apartment, 
which looks out on this prison-like garden, and 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 251 

one sees little, on first entering, but draperies of 
red silk, long canopies falling from numerous 
" parasols of honor," which are open and stand- 
ing upright on wooden supports. The air is heavy, 
saturated with opium and musk. There are deep 
red divans with silver pipes lying about for smok- 
ing the poison of which China is in a fair way to 
perish. The prince, who is twenty or twenty-two 
years old, is of a sickly ugliness, with divergent 
eyes; he is perfumed to excess, and dressed in 
pale silk in tones of mauve or lilac. 

In the evening dinner with the mandarin, where 
the commandant of the French post, the prince, 
two or three notables, and one of my " confreres," 
a member of the Academy of China, — a man- 
darin with a sapphire button, — are the guests. 
Seated in heavy square arm-chairs, there are six 
or seven of us around a table decorated with small, 
exquisite, and unusual bits of old porcelain, so 
tiny as to seem to be part of a doll service. Red 
candles in high copper chandeliers give us our 
light. 

This very morning the entire province had 
orders to leave off the winter head-dress and to 
put on the summer one, — a conical affair, re- 
sembling a lamp-shade, from which fall tufts of 
reddish horse-hair or peacock's or crow's feathers, 



252 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

according to the rank of the wearer. And since 
it is the style to wear them at dinner, hats of this 
description make grotesque figures of the guests. 

As for the ladies of the house, they, alas, re- 
main invisible, and it would be the worst possible 
breach of good form to ask for them or to refer 
to them in any way. It is well known that a 
Chinaman compelled to speak of his wife must 
refer to her in an indirect way, using, whenever 
possible, a qualifying term, devoid of all compli- 
ment, as, for example, " my offensive " or " my 
nauseating" wife. 

The dinner begins with preserved prunellas and 
a great variety of dainty sweetmeats, which are 
eaten with little chop-sticks. The mandarin makes 
excuses for not offering me sea-swallows' nests, but 
Y-Tchou is so far from the coast that it is diffi- 
cult to secure what one would like. But to make 
up for this lack, there is a dish of sharks' fins, 
another of the bladder of the sperm whale, another 
still of hinds' nerves, besides a ragout of water- 
lily roots with shrimps' eggs. 

The inevitable odor of opium and musk mingled 
with the flavor of strange sauces pervades the 
room, which is white with a black ceiling. Its 
walls are decorated with water-colors on long 
strips of precious yellow paper, containing repre- 
sentations of animals or of huge flowers. A score 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 2S3 

of servants flock about us with the same sort of 
head-dress as their masters, and clad in beautiful 
silk gowns with velvet corselets. At my right my 
*' confrere " of the Chinese Academy discourses 
to me of another world. He is old and quite 
withered-looking from the abuse of the fatal drug ; 
his small face, shrivelled to a mere nothing, is 
obliterated by his conical hat and by his big blue 
goggles. 

" Is it true," he inquires, " that the Middle Em- 
pire occupies the top of the territorial globe, and 
that Europe hangs on one side at an uncom- 
fortable angle? " 

It appears that he has at the ends of his fingers 
more than forty thousand characters in writing, 
and that he is able to improvise sweet poetry on 
any subject you may choose. From time to time 
I am aghast at the sight of his skeleton-like arm 
emerging from sleeves like pagodas, and stretch- 
ing out toward some dish. His object is to secure 
with his own two-tined fork some choice morsel 
for me, which compels me to resort to perpetual 
and diflicult jugglery in order not to have to eat 
the things. 

After several preposterous light dishes, boned 
ducks appear, then a copious variety of viands 
succeed one another until the guests announce 
that they really have had enough. Then they 



254 I^HE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

bring opium pipes and cigarettes, and soon it is 
time to take a palanquin for the nocturnal festi- 
val they are arranging for me. 

Outside, in the long avenue of porticoes, under 
the starry sky, all the servants of the Yamen await 
us with big paper lanterns, painted with bats and 
chimseras. A hundred friendly Boxers are also 
there, holding torches to light us better. Each of 
us gets into a palanquin, and the bearers trot off 
with us, while flaming torches run along beside 
us, and gongs, also running, begin the noise of 
battle at the head of our procession. 

By the light of dancing torches we file rapidly 
past the open stalls, past the groups of natives 
assembled to watch us, past the grimacing mon- 
sters ranged along our route. 

At the rear of an immense court stands a new 
building, where by the light of the torches we 
read the astonishing inscription, " Parisiana of 
Y-Tchou." " Parisiana " in this ultra-Chinese 
town, which until the previous autumn had never 
seen a European approach its walls ! Our bearers 
stop there, and we find it is a theatre improvised 
this winter by our sixty soldiers to help pass away 
the glacial evenings. 

I had promised to assist at a gala performance 
given for me by these grown-up children this even- 
ing. And of all the charming receptions that have 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 255 

been tendered me here and there all over the world, 
none has moved me more than this one arranged 
by a few soldiers exiled in a lost corner of China. 
Their reserved smiles of welcome, the few words 
one of them undertook to say for all, were more 
touching than any banquet or formal address, and 
I was glad to press the hands of the brave soldiers 
who dared not offer them. 

In order that I might have a souvenir of their 
evening's hospitality at Y-Tchou, they got up a 
subscription and presented me with a very local 
gift, — one of those red silk parasols with long 
falling draperies, which it is the custom in China 
to carry in front of men of mark. And cumbrous 
as the thing is, even when folded, it is needless to 
say that I shall take it with great care to France. 

They next gave me an illustrated programme, 
on which the name of each actor figured, followed 
by a pompous title, — '' Monsieur the soldier so- 
and-so of the Comedie-Frangaise," or " Monsieur 
the corporal so-and-so of the Theatre Sarah-Bern- 
hardt." We take our places. It is a real theatre 
that they have made, with a raised stage, scenery, 
and a curtain. 

In the Chinese arm-chairs, which are placed in 
the first row, their captain is seated next to me; 
then come the mandarin, the prince of the blood, 
and two or three other notables, with long queues. 



256 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

Behind us are the under-officers and the soldiers; 
several yellow babies in ceremonial toilettes mingle 
familiarly with them, even climbing up on their 
knees. They are pupils from their school. For 
they have started a school, like the one at Lai- 
Chou-Chien, to teach French to the children of 
the neighborhood. A sergeant presented me to 
an inimitable youngster of not more than six, 
dressed for the occasion in a beautiful gown, his 
little short, thick queue tied with red silk, who 
recited for me the beginning of " Maitre corbeau 
sur un arbre perche," in a deep voice, rolling his 
eyes to the ceiling the while. 

Three taps and the curtain rises. First comes 
a farce, by I know not whom, but certainly much 
retouched by themselves with an unexpected turn 
of wit which is irresistible. The ladies, the 
mothers-in-law, with false hair made of oakum, 
are indescribable. Then more comic scenes and 
songs from the " Black Cat." The Chinese guests 
on their throne-like chairs remain as impassive as 
the Buddhas of the pagodas. What do their Asi- 
atic brains make of all this French gaiety? 

Before the last numbers on the programme are 
over the sudden thundering of gongs is heard 
outside, the playing of citherns, and the clashing 
of cymbals, and of all the rest of the iron instru- 
ments of China. It is the prelude to the fete 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 257 

which the mandarin is to give me, which is to 
take place in the courtyard of the army quarters, 
and in which our soldiers naturally are to take 
part. 

A profusion of lanterns illumines the court, 
together with the flaming torches of a hundred 
Boxers. First there is a stilt dance, then follow 
all the gymnastic societies of the adjoining dis- 
trict in their specialties. Little country boys 
twelve years old, costumed like lords of old dy- 
nasties, have a sham battle, flourishing their 
swords and jumping about like kittens, prodigies 
of quickness and lightness. Then come the young 
men of another village, who throw off their gar- 
ments and begin to twirl pitchforks all around 
their naked bodies; by a twist of the wrist or by 
an imperceptible movement of the foot they are 
turned so rapidly that very soon they are no 
longer forks to our eyes, but a row of endless 
serpents about the breasts of the men. Then sud- 
denly, more deftly than in the best managed circus, 
a horizontal bar is placed before us, and acrobats, 
naked to the waist, and superbly muscular, give a 
performance. They belong to the mandarin, and 
are the very men who just now served us at the 
table in beautiful silken robes. 

It all ended with very long and noisy fire- 
works. When the pieces attached to invisible 

17 



258 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

bamboo stems exploded in the air, delicate and 
luminous paper pagodas floated off across the 
starry sky, fabrics of a Chinese dream, trem- 
bling, imponderable, which suddenly took fire and 
disappeared in smoke. 

It is late when we return through the little dark 
streets, now all asleep. Our bearers trot along, es- 
corted by a thousand dancing lights from torches 
and lanterns. 

Toward midnight I am at last alone, in the 
depths of the Yamen, in my separate dwelling, 
the avenue leading to it guarded by motionless, 
crouching beasts. On my centre-table they have 
placed a luncheon of all the kinds of cakes known 
to China. Trees in fruit, in flower, and without 
leaves, decorate my small tables, — dwarf trees, 
of course, grown in porcelain jars, and so tortured 
as to become unnatural. A little pear-tree has 
assumed the regular form of a lyre composed of 
white blossoms; a small peach-tree resembles a 
crown made of pink flowers. Everything in my 
room, except these fresh spring plants, is old, 
warped, worm-eaten, and at the holes in a ceiling 
that was once white appear the faces of innumer- 
able rats, whose eyes follow me about the room. 
As soon as I put out my light and lie down in my 
great bed with carvings representing horrible ani- 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 259 

mals, I hear all these rats come down, move about 
among the fine porcelains, and gnaw at my cakes. 
Then from out the more and more profound still- 
ness of my surroundings the night watchmen with 
muffled steps begin discreetly to use their castanets. 



Sunday, April 28. 

An early morning walk among the silver-sculp- 
tors of Y-Tchou, then through a quite dead part 
of the town to an antique pagoda half crumbled 
away, which stands among some phantom trees 
of which little but the bark is left. Along its 
galleries the tortures of the Buddhist hell are de- 
picted; several hundred life-sized persons carved 
in wood filled with worm-holes, are fighting with 
devils who are tearing them to pieces or burning 
them alive. 

At nine o'clock I mount my horse and start ofiF 
with my men, in order to cover before noon the 
fifteen or eighteen kilometres which still separate 
me from the mysterious burial-places of the em- 
perors; for we return to Y-Tchou for the night, 
and set off again to-morrow on the road to Pekin. 

We go out at the gate opposite the one we en- 
tered yesterday. Nowhere else have we seen so 
many monsters as in this ancient town ; their great 



26o THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

sneering faces appear on all sides out of the ground, 
where time has almost buried them. A few entire 
figures may be seen crouching on their pedestals, 
guarding the approaches to the granite bridges or 
ranged in rows around the squares. 

As we leave the town, we pass a poor-looking 
pagoda on whose walls hang cages containing 
human heads recently cut off. And then we find 
ourselves once more in the silent fields under the 
burning sun. 

The prince accompanies us, riding a Mongolian 
colt as rough-coated as a spaniel. His rose-colored 
silks and velvet foot-gear form a striking contrast 
to our rough costumes and dusty boots, and he 
leaves behind him a trail of musk. 



IV 

The country slopes gently toward the range of 
Mongolian mountains, which, though still some 
distance ahead of us, is now growing rapidly in 
height. Trees are more and more frequent, grass 
grows naturally here and there, and we have left 
the dreary ashy soil. 

Near by there are a few pointed-topped hills, 
queerly shaped, with occasionally an old tower 
perched on the summit, — the ten or twelve storied 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 261 

kind, which at once give the landscape a Chinese 
look, with superimposed roofs, curved up like dogs' 
ears, at the corners, with an ^olian harp at each 
end. 

The air is growing purer ; the cloud of dust is 
left behind as we approach the unquestionably 
privileged region which has been selected for the 
repose of the celestial emperors and empresses. 

We stop at a village, after about a dozen kilo- 
metres, to take breakfast with a great prince of 
much higher rank than the one who rides with 
us. He is a direct uncle of the Emperor, in dis- 
grace with the Empress, whose favorite he has 
been, and now entrusted with the guardianship of 
the tombs. As he is in deep mourning, he is 
dressed in cotton like the poor, and yet does not 
resemble them. He makes excuses for receiving 
us in a dilapidated old house, his own Yamen 
having been burned by the Germans, and offers us 
a very Chinese breakfast, where reappear the 
sharks' wings and hinds' nerves. The flat-faced 
peasants of the neighborhood peer at us in the 
meantime through the numerous holes in the rice- 
paper window-panes. 

We remount at once, after the last cup of tea, 
to visit the tombs toward which we have been jour- 
neying for three days, and which are now very 
near. My confrere of the Pekin Academy, with 



262 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

his big, round spectacles and his Httle bird-like 
body completely lost in his beautiful silken robes, 
has rejoined us, and slowly follows along upon a 
mule. 

A more and more solitary country. No more 
villages, no more fields! The road winds along 
among the hills, — which are covered with grass 
and flowers, — surprising and enchanting our un- 
accustomed eyes. It seems like a glimpse of Eden 
after the dusty-gray China we have come through, 
where the only green thing was the wheat. The 
perpetual dust of Petchili has been left behind; 
but on the plain below we still perceive it, like a 
fog from which we have escaped. 

We continue to mount, and soon arrive at the 
first spurs of the Mongolian range. Here behind a 
wall of earth we find an immense Tartar camp, at 
least two thousand men, armed with lances, bows, 
and arrows, guard of honor of the defunct rulers. 

Once more we see a clear horizon, the very 
memory of which had faded. It seems as though 
these Mongolian mountains suddenly huddled to- 
gether as though they had all pressed forward; 
very rocky they are, with strange outlines, peaks 
like turrets or pagoda-towers rising above us, — 
all of a beautiful purple iris effect. 

Ahead of us we begin to see on all sides wooded 
valleys and forests of cedar. True, they are arti- 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 263 

ficial forests, although very old, — planted centuries 
ago for this funeral park, covering an area twenty 
miles in circumference, where four Tartar em- 
perors sleep. 

We enter this silent, shadowy place, astonished 
to find that, contrary to Chinese custom, it is sur- 
rounded by no wall. No doubt it was felt that this 
isolated spot would be sufficiently protected by the 
terror inspired by the shades of the emperors, as 
well as by a general edict of death promulgated in 
advance against any one who dared to cultivate a 
bit of the ground or even sow a seed. 

It is the sacred wood par excellence, with all its 
retirement and its mystery. What marvellous 
poets of the dead the Chinese are, to be able to 
prepare them such dwelling-places! 

Here in the shadows one is tempted to speak 
low, as under the roof of a temple; one feels it a 
profanity for the horses to trample down the turf, 
— a carpet of fine grass and blossoms, venerated 
for ages past, and apparently never disturbed. The 
great cedars and the hundred-year-old thuyas, 
scattered over the hills and in the valleys, are sep- 
arated by open spaces where brushwood grows; 
and under the colonnade formed by their massive 
trunks there is nothing but short grass, exquisite 
tiny flowers, and moss and lichens. 

The dust that obscures the sky on the plains 



264 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

apparently never reaches this chosen spot, for the 
magnificent green of the trees is nowhere dimmed. 
In this superb soHtude, which men have created 
here and dedicated to the shades of their masters, 
the distance disclosed to us as our road takes us 
past some clearing or up some height is of an 
absolute limpidity. A light as from Paradise falls 
upon us from a heaven profoundly blue, streaked 
with tiny clouds, rose-gray like turtle-doves. At 
such moments one gets a glimpse of splendid dis- 
tant golden-yellow roofs rising amongst sombre 
branches, like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty. 

Not a soul in all this shaded road. The silence 
of the desert! Only occasionally the croaking of 
a raven, — too funereal a bird, it seems, for the 
calm enchantment of this place, where Death is 
compelled, before entering, to lay aside its horror 
and to become simply the magician of unending 
rest. 

In some places the trees form avenues which are 
finally lost to sight in the green dusk. Elsewhere 
they have been planted without design, and seem 
to have grown of their own accord and to form a 
natural forest. All the details recall the fact that 
the place is magnificent, imperial, sacred; the 
smallest bridge, thrown over a stream which 
crosses the road, is of white marble of rare design, 
covered with beautiful carvings; an heraldic 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 26s 

beast, crouching in the shadow, menaces us with 
a ferocious smile as we pass by, or a marble obe- 
lisk surrounded by five-clawed dragons rises un- 
expectedly in its snowy whiteness, outlined against 
the dark background of the cedars. 

In this wood, twenty miles in circumference, lie 
the bodies of but four emperors; that of the Em- 
press Regent, whose tomb was long since begun, 
will be added as well as her son's, the young Em- 
peror, who has had his chosen place marked with 
a stele of gray marble.^ And that is all. Other 
sovereigns, past or to be, sleep, or will sleep, else- 
where, in other Edens, as vast and as wonderfully 
arranged. Immense space is required for the body 
of a Son of Heaven, and immense solitary silence 
must reign round about it. 

The arrangement of these tombs is regulated by 
unchangeable plans, which date back to old extin- 
guished dynasties. They are all alike, recalling 
those of the Ming emperors, which antedate them 
by several centuries, and whose ruins have been 
for a long time the object of one of the excursions 
permitted to European travellers. 

One invariably approaches by a cut in the sombre 
forest, half a mile in length, which has been so 

1 His subjects have had engraven on this stele an inscription 
expressing the hope that their sovereign may live ten times ten 
thousand years. 



266 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

planned by the artists of the past that it opens, like 
the doors of a magnificent stage-setting, upon 
some incomparable background such as a particu- 
larly high mountain, abrupt and bold, or a mass 
of rock presenting one of those anomalies of form 
and color that the Chinese everywhere seek. 

Invariably, also, the avenue begins with great 
triumphal arches of white marble, which are, need- 
less to say, surmounted by monsters bristling with 
horns and claws. 

In the case of the ancestor of the present Em- 
peror, who receives to-day our first visit, these 
entrance arches appear unexpectedly in the heart 
of the forest, their bases entangled with wild bind- 
weed. They seem to have shot up, at the rubbing 
of an enchanter's magic ring, out of what appears 
to be virgin soil, so covered is it with moss and 
with the rare delicate little plants which nothing 
disturbs, and which grow only in places that have 
long been quiet and respected by man. 

Next come some marble bridges with semi- 
circular arches; there are three bridges exactly 
alike, for each time an emperor passes, dead or 
alive, the middle bridge is reserved for him alone. 
The architects of the tombs were careful to have 
the avenue crossed several times by artificial 
streams, in order to have an occasion for spanning 
them with these charming curves of everlasting 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 267 

white. On each rail of the bridge there is an inter- 
twining of imperial fancies. The sloping pave- 
ment is white and slippery, and completely framed 
in grass, which pushes through and flourishes in 
all its joinings. 

The crossing is dangerously slippery for our 
horses, whose steps resound mournfully on the 
marble; the sudden noise we make in the stillness 
is almost a source of embarrassment to us, making 
us feel as though our coming had disturbed in an 
unseemly manner the composure of the necrop- 
olis. With the exception of ourselves and a few 
ravens in the trees, nothing moves and nothing 
lives in all the immensity of this memorial 
park. 

Beyond the three arched bridges the avenue leads 
to the first temple, with a yellow enamelled roof, 
which seems to bar our way. At the four corners 
of the open space it occupies, rise four rostral col- 
umns made of marble, white as ivory, — admirable 
monoliths, with a crouching animal at the top of 
each one, similar to those enthroned on the obe- 
lisks in front of the palace at Pekin, — a sort of 
slender jackal, with long, erect ears, upturned eyes, 
and a mouth open as if howling to heaven. This 
first temple contains nothing but three giant stele, 
resting on marble turtles as large as leviathans. 
They recount the glory of a defunct emperor ; the 



268 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

first is inscribed in the Tartar language, the second 
in Chinese, the third in Manchou. 

Beyond this temple of stele the avenue is pro- 
longed in the same direction for an indefinite 
length, very majestic with its two walls of black- 
green cedars, and its carpet of grass, flowers, 
and moss, which looks as though it were never 
trampled upon. All the avenues in these woods 
are always thus deserted, always silent, for the 
Chinese come here only at rare intervals, in solemn, 
respectful processions to perform their funeral 
rites. And it is the air of desertion in the midst 
of splendor which is the great charm of this place, 
unique in all the world. 

When the Allies have left China, this park of 
tombs, open to us for a single moment, will be once 
more impenetrable for how long we do not know ; 
perhaps until another invasion, which may cause 
the venerable yellow Colossus to crumble away, — 
unless, indeed, it awakes from its slumber of a 
thousand years; for the Colossus is still capable 
of spreading terror, and of arming itself for a 
revenge of which one dares not think — Mon 
Dieu! the day when China, in the place of its small 
regiments of mercenaries and bandits, shall arm 
in mass for a supreme revolt its millions of young 
peasants such as I have recently seen, sober, cruel, 
spare, muscular, accustomed to every sort of phys- 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 269 

ical exercise, and defiant of death, what a terri- 
fying army it will have, if modern instruments 
of destruction are placed in their hands! On 
reflection, it seems as though certain of the Allies 
have been rather rash to have sown here so many 
seeds of hatred, and to have created so much desire 
for vengeance. 

Now, at the end of the dark deserted green 
avenue the final temple shows its shining roof. 
The mountain above, the strange, crenellated moun- 
tain, which has been chosen as a sort of back- 
ground for all this sad creation, rises to-day all 
violet and rose against a bit of rare blue sky, — 
the blue of a turquoise turning to green. The light 
continues to be modified, exquisite; the sun is 
veiled by the same clouds that in color remind one 
of turtle-doves, and we no longer hear our horses' 
steps, so thick is the carpet of grass and moss. 

Now one catches sight of the great triple doors 
of the sanctuary; they are blood-red with hinges 
of gold. Then comes the whiteness of three marble 
bridges with slippery pavements, in crossing which 
my little army makes an exaggerated noise, as 
though the rows of cedars ranged like a wall on 
either side of us had the sonority of a church. 
From here on, as if to guard the ever more sacred 
approach, tall marble statues are lined up on each 
side of the avenue. We pass between motionless 



270 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

elephants, horses, lions, and mute white warriors, 
three times the height of man. 

As we approach the white terraces of the temple 
we begin to perceive the ravages of war. The 
German soldiers, who were here before ours, tore 
out in places, with the points of their swords, the 
beautiful gilded bronze decorations of the red 
doors, taking them to be gold. 

In the first court of one of the lateral edifices, 
whose roofs are as sumptuously enamelled as those 
of the big sanctuary, are the kitchens, — where are 
prepared at certain times repasts for the Shadow 
of Death, — extensive enough to provide for a 
legion of ogres or vampires. Enormous ovens, 
enormous bronze troughs in which whole oxen are 
cooked, are still intact ; but the pavement is littered 
with broken porcelains, with fragments which are 
the result of a blow with the butt end of a gun or 
a bayonet. 

On a high terrace, after passing two or three 
courts paved with marble, after two or three en- 
closures entered by triple doors of cedar, the cen- 
tral temple opens before us, empty and devastated. 
It is magnificent in its proportions, with tall col- 
umns of red and gold lacquer, but it has been de- 
spoiled of its sacred riches. Heavy silk hangings, 
idols, silver drinking-vessels, flat silver dishes for 
the feasts of the Shades had almost entirely dis- 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 271 

appeared when the French arrived, and what re- 
mained of the treasures has been collected in a 
safe place by our officers. Two of them have just 
been decorated by the Emperor of China for this 
preservation of property, and it is one of the most 
curious episodes of this abnormal war, the sov- 
ereign of the invaded country spontaneously deco- 
rating the officers of the invading army out of 
gratitude. Behind the last temple is the colossal 
tomb. 

For the interment of an emperor the Chinese 
cut a piece out of a hill as one would cut out a 
portion from a Titanic cake; then they isolate 
it by enormous excavations and surround it with 
crenellated ramparts. It thus becomes a massive 
citadel. Then in the bowels of the earth they dig 
a sepulchral passageway known only to the ini- 
tiated, and at its end they place the emperor, not 
mummified, but in a thick coffin made of cedar 
lacquered in gold, which must prevent rapid dis- 
integration. Then they seal forever the subter- 
ranean door by a kind of screen of faience, 
invariably yellow and green, with relief repre- 
senting the lotus, dragons, or clouds. Each sov- 
ereign in his turn is buried and sealed up in the 
same manner, — in the midst of a forest region 
equally vast and equally solitary. 

At last we arrive at the end of this section of a 



272 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

hill and of this rampart, stopped in our course by 
a melancholy screen of yellow and green faience, 
which seems to be the end of our forty-league 
journey. It is a square screen, twenty feet each 
way, brilliant with color and varnish, and in strik- 
ing contrast to the gray brick wall and gray earth. 

The ravens are massed here as though they 
divined the sinister thing concealed from them in 
the heart of the mountain, and receive us with a 
chorus of cries. 

Opposite the faience screen is an altar of rough- 
hewn marble, whose brutal simplicity is in strik- 
ing contrast to the splendors of the temple and 
the avenue. It supports a sort of incense burner 
of unknown and tragic significance, and two or 
three symbolic articles intentionally rude in work- 
manship. One is confounded by the strange forms, 
the almost primitive barbarity of these last and 
supreme objects at the threshold of the tomb; 
their aspect is intended to create a sort of inde- 
finable terror. I remember once, in the holy 
mountain at Nikko, where sleep the emperors of 
old Japan, that after the fairy-like magnificence 
of gold-lacquered temples, outside the little bronze 
door which forms the entrance to each sepulture, 
I stumbled against just such an altar, supporting 
two or three worn emblems, as disturbing as these 
in their artificial barbaric naivete. 



# 



TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS 273 

It seems that in these subterranean passages of 
the Son of Heaven there are heaps of treasures, 
precious stones, and metals. Those who are au- 
thorities in Chinese matters assured our generals 
that enough would be found about the body of a 
single emperor to pay the war indemnity de- 
manded by Europe, and that the mere threat of 
violating one of these ancestral tombs would 
suffice to bring the Regent and her son to 
Pekin submissive and yielding, ready to make 
all concessions. 

Happily for our Occidental honor, no one of 
the Allies would consent to this means, so the 
yellow and green faience screens have not been 
broken; every dragon, every lotus, no matter 
how delicate in relief, has remained intact. All 
have paused here. The old emperors, behind their 
everlasting walls, may have heard the approach of 
the trumpets of the barbarian army and the beat- 
ing of their drums, but each one of them could 
fall asleep again, tranquil as before, surrounded 
by the empty glory of his fabulous wealth. 



18 



VIII 

THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

1 

Pekin, Wednesday May i. 

I RETURNED yesterday from my visit to 
the tombs of the emperors after three days 
and a half of journeying in the haze created 
by the " yellow wind," beneath a heavy sun con- 
stantly obscured by the dust. I am back once 
more in Pekin, with our chief general, in my old 
rooms in the Palace of the North. Yesterday the 
thermometer registered 40° in the shade, to-day 
only 8° (a difference of 32° in twenty-four 
hours). An icy wind drives the rain-drops that 
are mingled with a few white flakes, and the 
neighboring mountains behind the Summer Pal- 
ace are quite covered with snow. Yet there are 
people in France who complain of our springs! 

Now that my expedition is over, I ought at 
once to go back to Taku and the squadron, but 
the general wants me to stay for a great fete he 
is to give to the staff officers of the allied armies, 



THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 275 

and so I have telegraphed to the admiral, asking 
for three days more. 

In the evening I walk on the esplanade of the 
Rotunda Palace in company with Colonel Mar- 
chand. The weather is bad, stormy, and cold, and 
the twilight comes on too early on account of the 
rapidly moving clouds. As the wind parts them 
one gets glimpses of the mountains behind the 
Summer Palace, snowy white against a back- 
ground of dark clouds. 

Confusion reigns about us, but it is the confu- 
sion of a fete instead of that incidental to battle 
and death, as I had known it here last autumn. 
Zouaves and African chasseurs are running about, 
carrying ladders, draperies, and armfuls of branches 
and flowers. The old cedars in the vicinity of the 
beautiful pagoda shining with enamel, lacquer, and 
gold, are disguised until they look like fruit-trees; 
upon their almost sacred branches are thousands 
of yellow balls that look like big oranges. Chains 
supporting garlands of Chinese lanterns go from 
one to the other. 

It is Colonel Marchand who has planned it all. 
'' Do you think it will be pretty ? Do you think 
it will be a little unusual ? You see, I want to do 
it better than the others." 

The others were the Germans, the Americans, 
and all the rest of the Allies who have given 



276 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

these fetes before the French. So my new friend 
has been in the most feverish state of activity for 
five or six days, in attempting to do something 
that has never been done before, working far into 
the night with his men, who share his enthusiasm, 
putting into this play-work the same passionate 
effort he put into conducting his Httle army across 
Africa. From time to time, though, his smile 
betrays that he is finding amusement in all this, 
and will not take its possible failure tragically, if 
wind and snow come to upset the fairyland of his 
dreams. 

No, but this cold is annoying all the same! 
What shall we do, since it is to take place in the 
open air on the terraces of the palace, if the north 
wind should blow? What of the illuminations, 
of the awnings? And the women, won't they 
freeze in their evening gowns? For there are 
women even here in the heart of the Yellow City. 

Suddenly a gust of wind breaks down a whole 
string of lanterns with pearl pendants, which are 
already hung from the branches of the old cedars, 
and upsets a row of the flower-pots, which have 
been brought up here by the hundreds to give life 
to these old gardens. 



THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 277 

Thursday, May 2. 

Messengers have been sent to the four corners 
of Pekin, announcing that this evening's fete has 
been postponed until Saturday, in the hope that 
the bad weather will be over by that time. So I 
have had to send a despatch, asking the admiral 
for a prolongation of my freedom. I came away 
for three days and have remained almost a month, 
and am wearing shirts and waistcoats borrowed 
here and there from my various army friends. 

This morning I have the honor of breakfasting 
with our neighbor in the Yellow City, Marshal 
von Waldersee. 

Covers are laid for the marshal and his staff 
in a large room finished in marquetry and carv- 
ings, in a part of the palace untouched by the 
flames. They are all correctly attired in irre- 
proachable military garb in the midst of this fan- 
tastically Chinese setting. 

It is the first time in my life that I have sat 
down at a table with German officers, and I had 
not anticipated the pang of anguish with which I 
arrived among them as a guest. Oh, the memo- 
ries of thirty years ago, and the special aspects 
which that terrible year had for me! 

That long winter of 1870 was passed in a 
wretched little boat on the coast of Prussia. 



278 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

How well I remember my watch on the cold 
decks, — child that I was, almost, — and the sil- 
houette of a certain King William that so often 
appeared on the horizon in pursuit of us, at the 
sight of which we always fled, its balls whizzing 
behind us over the icy waters. Then the despair 
of feeling that our small part there had been so 
useless and unavailing! We knew nothing about 
it until long afterward; news came seldom, and 
when it did come it was in little sealed papers 
that we opened tremblingly. Over each fresh 
disaster, over each new story of German cruelty, 
what rage filled our hearts, — childlike in the 
excess of their violence, — what vows we made 
among ourselves never to forget! All this came 
to me pell-mell, or rather a rapid synthesis of it 
all, on the very threshold of this breakfast-room, 
even before I had crossed the sill, from the mere 
sight of the pointed helmets that hung along the 
wall, and I felt like going away. 

But I did not, and the feeling disappeared in 
the dark backward and abysm of time. Their 
welcome, their handshakes, and their smiles of 
good fellowship made me forget it in a second, 
for the moment at least. At anv rate, it seems 
that there is not between them and us that racial 
antipathy which is less easily overcome than the 
sharp rancor of war. 



THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 279 

During breakfast this Chinese palace of theirs, 
accustomed to the sound of gongs and flutes, 
echoes to the strains of '' Lohengrin " or the 
''Rheingold," played in the distance by their mili- 
tary band. The white-haired marshal was good 
enough to give me a seat near him, and, like all 
of our people who have had the honor to come 
under his influence, I felt the charm of his ex- 
quisite distinction of manner, of his kindness and 
goodness. 

Friday, May 3. 

More and more people are coming back to 
Pekin, until it is almost as crowded as of yore. 
The people are very much occupied with funerals. 
Last summer the Chinese here were killing one 
another; now they are burying one another. 
Every family has kept its dead in the house for 
months, according to their custom, in thick cedar 
coffins, which somewhat modify the odor of decay ; 
they bring the dead their daily meals as well as 
presents; they burn red wax candles for them; 
they give them music ; they play the flute and the 
gong in the continual fear of not paying them 
enough honor and of incurring their vengeance 
and their ill will. The time has come now to take 
them to their graves, with processions a kilometre 
long, with more flutes and gongs, innumerable 



28o THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

lanterns and gilded emblems, which they hire at 
high prices; they ruin themselves for monuments 
and offerings; they scarcely sleep for fear of see- 
ing their dead return. I do not remember who it 
was who described China as *' a country where a 
few hundred millions of living Chinese are domi- 
nated and terrorized by a few thousand millions 
of dead ones." Tombs everywhere and of every 
form ; one sees nothing else on the plains of Pekin. 
As for all the thickets of cedar, pine, and arbor- 
vitse, they are nothing but funeral parks, walled 
in by double or triple walls, a single park often 
being consecrated to one person, thus cutting the 
living off from an enormous amount of space. 
A defunct Lama, whom I visited to-day, occupies 
on his own account a space two or three kilometres 
square. The old trees in his park, scarcely leafed 
out as yet, give little shade from the sun, which 
is already dangerously hot. In the centre of it is 
a marble mausoleum, — a pyramidal structure with 
small figures and masses of white carvings which 
taper skyward, terminating in gilt tips. Scattered 
about under the cedars are crumbling old temples, 
built long ago to the memory of this holy man, 
enclosing in their obscurity a whole population of 
gilded idols that are turning to dust. Just out- 
side, the cindery soil where no one ever walks, is 
strewn with the resinous cones from the trees, 



THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 281 

and with the black feathers of the crows, who in- 
habit this silent place by the hundreds. As in the 
imperial woods, April has brought out a few violet 
gillyflowers and a quantity of very small iris of 
the same color. 

All the woods which are used for burial places — 
and the country is encumbered with them — re- 
semble this one, and contain the same old temples, 
the same idols, and the same crows. 

The plains of Petchili are an immense necropo- 
lis, where the living tremble lest they offend one 
of the innumerable dead. 

Pekin is not only being repeopled, but rebuilt; 
hastily though, out of small blackened bricks 
from the ruins, so that the new streets will prob- 
ably never display the luxurious fagades, the lacy, 
gilded wood-work of former times. 

The great eastern artery that crosses the Tar- 
tar City is, of all the streets of old Pekin, the 
nearest to what it used to be; life here is becom- 
ing intense, the people swarm. For the length of 
a league this avenue, which is fifty metres wide, 
— of magnificent proportions, although now very 
much injured, — is invaded by thousands of plat- 
forms, sheds, tents, or in some cases simply um- 
brellas stuck in the ground, where the people who 
serve horrible drinks and food dispense their 



282 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

wares, always in delicate China very much deco- 
rated ; there are charlatans, acupuncturers, Punch- 
and-Judy shows, musicians, and story-tellers. The 
crowd is divided into an infinite number of cur- 
rents by all these small shops and theatres, like 
the waters of a river filled with islands, so that 
there is a constant eddy of human heads black 
with dust and filth. Rough, hoarse vociferations, 
in a quality of voice unfamiliar to our ears, are 
heard on all sides, to an accompaniment of grat- 
ing violins, noisy gongs and bells. The caravans 
of enormous Mongolian camels, which all winter 
encumber the streets in endless processions, have 
disappeared in the solitudes of the North, together 
with their flat-faced drivers, who wish to escape 
the torrid heat; but their place in the central part 
of the street, reserved for animals and vehicles, is 
taken by numerous small horses and tiny carriages, 
and the cracking of whips is heard on all sides. 

On the ground in front of the houses, spread 
out upon the mud and filth, the extravagant rag- 
fair that began last autumn is still going on; the 
remains of so much pillage and burning are left 
that it seems as though there was no end to them, 
— magnificently embroidered clothing spotted with 
blood, Buddhas, grotesque figures, jewels, dead 
men's wigs, cracked vases, or precious fragments 
of jade. 



THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 283 

Behind all these ridiculous things, behind all this 
dusty display, the greater number of the houses, in 
contrast with the poverty-stricken appearance of 
the crowds, seem astonishingly rich in carvings 
and decorations, — a mass of openwork and fine 
gilding from top to bottom. Indefatigable artists, 
with the Chinese patience and skill which confound 
us, have carved crowds of little figures, monsters, 
and birds in the midst of flowers, and trees on 
which you can count the leaves. 

Last summer, while the Boxers were burning 
so continually, these astonishing fagades, repre- 
senting an incalculable amount of human labor, 
were consumed by the hundreds ; they made Pekin 
a veritable museum of carving and gold, the like 
of which men of to-day will never again have the 
time to construct. 

Saturday, May 4. 

The fete given by our general to the staff officers 
of the AlUes is really coming off to-night. But 
before this we are to have a celebration among our- 
selves : the inauguration of a new boulevard in our 
quarter, from the Marble Bridge to the Yellow 
Gate, — a long boulevard whose construction was 
entrusted to Colonel Marchand, and which is to 
bear the name of our general. Never since the 
far-distant epoch when her network of paved 



284 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

avenues was laid out has Pekin seen such a thing, 
— a straight, level roadway, without ruts or 
humps, where carriages may drive rapidly between 
two rows of young trees. 

There is a great crowd to assist at this inaugu- 
ration. On both sides of the new, freshly gravelled, 
and still empty avenue — barred off by sentinels 
and ropes from one end to the other — all our 
soldiers are lined up, with a sprinkling of German 
soldiers too, for they are quite neighborly with 
ours, and a few Chinese, both men and women, in 
festive array. Quaint, charming babies, with cat- 
like eyes that slant upward toward the temple, 
occupy the first row, directly behind the rope; our 
soldiers are carrying some of them so that they 
may see better, and one big Zouave is walking up 
and down with two Chinese children, three or four 
years old, one on each shoulder. There are people 
on the roofs, too, — many of the convalescents are 
standing about on the tiled roof of our hospital, 
and some African chasseurs, seeking a choice place, 
have climbed the Gothic tower of the church, 
which, with the big tricolored flag floating in the 
breeze, dominates the entire scene. 

There are French flags over all the Chinese 
doors, and they are arranged in groups, like tro- 
phies, with lanterns and garlands on all the poles. 
It is like a sort of foreign exotic Fourteenth of 



THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 285 

July; if it were in France the decorations would 
be commonplace; but here, in Pekin, they are 
touching and fine, especially when the military 
band arrives, and the " Marseillaise " bursts forth. 

The inauguration consists simply of a sort of 
charge, executed on the fresh gravel by all the 
French officers, from the Yellow Gate to the other 
extremity of the boulevard, where the general 
awaits them on a balcony trimmed with garlands 
of green, and smilingly offers them champagne. 
Then the frail barriers are removed, the crowd 
disperses gaily, the children with the cat-like eyes 
trudge off over the well-rolled avenue, and all is 
over. 

When we have all returned to France, and Pekin 
is again in the hands of the Chinese, I fear that this 
Avenue du General- Vayron — though they now ap- 
pear to appreciate it — will not last two winters. 



II 

Eight o'clock in the evening. The long May twi- 
light is almost over, and the curious lanterns, some 
of glass with long strings of pearls, others of rice- 
paper in the form of birds or of lotus blossoms, are 
everywhere lighted among the old cedar branches 
on the esplanade of the Rotunda Palace, which I 



286 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

had known plunged in such a melancholy abyss of 
sadness and silence. To-night all is movement, 
life, gay light. Already uniformed officers of all 
the nations of Europe, and Chinese, in long silken 
robes, with official head-dresses from which depend 
peacock feathers, are going and coming amid the 
wonderful decorations. A table for seventy is 
set under a tent, and we are awaiting our incon- 
gruous assembly of guests. 

Followed by small suites, they arrive from all 
quarters of Pekin, some on horseback, others in 
carriages, in chairs, or in sumptuous palanquins. 
As soon as any person of distinction appears at the 
lower door of the inclined plane, one of our mili- 
tary band, who is on the lookout, orders the play- 
ing of the national air of his country. . The Russian 
Hymn follows the German, or the Japanese the 
march of the Bersaglieri. Even the Chinese air 
is heard, for some one pompously enters with a 
large red paper, which proves to be the visiting- 
card of Li-Hung-Chang, who is below, but who, 
in accordance with the etiquette of his country, 
is announced before he makes his appearance. 
Preceded by similar cards, the Chief- Justice of 
Pekin and the Representative Extraordinary of the 
Empress are the next to arrive. These Chinese 
princes, who are to assist at our fete, come in gala 
palanquins, with a cavalry escort, and they make 



THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 287 

their entrance with the most inscrutable expres- 
sions on their faces, followed by a band of servants 
dressed in silk. It was hard to have them! But 
Colonel Marchand, with the general's permission, 
made it a point of honor to invite them. Mixed 
in with our Western uniforms, mandarins' robes 
and pointed hats with the coral button are numer- 
ous. Their presence at this barbarian feast right 
in the heart of the Imperial City, which we have 
profaned, will remain one of the most singular in- 
consistencies of our time. 

Such a length of table as there is, — its legs 
resting on an imperial carpet which seems to be 
made of thick yellow velvet! Bunches of flowers 
are arranged in priceless, gigantic old cloisonne 
vases that have been taken out of the reserves of 
the Empress for a single night. Marshal von 
Waldersee, with the wife of the French minister 
at his side, occupies the seat of honor; then two 
bishops in violet robes, the generals and officers of 
the seven allied nations, five or six women in 
evening dress, and, lastly, the three great princes 
of China, so enigmatical in their embroidered silks, 
their eyes partly concealed by their ceremonial hats 
and falling plumes. 

At the close of this strange dinner, when the 
roses in the big, precious vases are beginning to 



288 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

hang their heads, our general, toward the close of 
his toast, turns to the Yellow Princes : " Your 
presence here among us,'' he says, " is a sufficient 
proof that we did not come here to make war 
against China, but only against an abominable 
sect," etc. 

Then the Empress's representative takes up the 
ball with a suppleness characteristic of the far 
East, and, without turning a hair, replies (he 
was secretly a furious Boxer) : " In the name of 
Her Imperial Chinese Majesty, I thank the gen- 
erous nations of Europe for having extended a 
helping hand to our government in one of the 
gravest crises it has ever passed through." 

A stupefied silence follows, and then glasses are 
emptied. 

During the banquet the esplanade is filled with 
many uniformed and gaily dressed persons, of all 
sorts and colors, who are invited for the evening. 
The toasts having come to an end with the reply of 
the Chinese, I lean over the edge of the terrace to 
watch from on high and from afar the lighting 
up of the entire place below. 

Coming out from under the awnings and the 
cedar branches, which obscure the view, it is a sur- 
prise and a delight to see the borders of the lake 
and the melancholy, silent landscape, — in ordi- 
nary times dark, disturbing, ghostly places as soon 



THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 289 

as night approaches, — as the Hghts come on as if 
for some fantastic apotheosis. 

Soldiers have been stationed in all the old palaces 
and temples that are scattered amongst the trees, 
and in less than an hour, by climbing along the 
enamelled tiles, they have lighted innumerable red 
lanterns, which form lines of fire, outlining the 
curves of the multiple-storied roofs and empha- 
sizing the Chinese characteristic of the architecture 
and the eccentricity of the miradors and towers. 
All along the tragic lake where the bodies still lie, 
concealed in the grass, is a row of lights ; and as 
far as one can see the entire shadowy park, so 
ruined and desolate, creates an illusion of gaiety. 
The old dungeon on the Island of Jade throws out 
bright rays and blue fire. The Empress's gondolas, 
so long stationary, and more or less damaged, are 
out to-night on the reflecting waters, which, with 
the lights, remind one of Venice. For a single 
night an appearance of life pervades these phan- 
toms of real things. And all this, never seen 
before, will never be seen again. 

What an astounding contrast with what I used 
to see when I was alone in this palace in the autumn 
twilight ! Along the lake groups of people in ball 
dress instead of corpses, — my only neighbors 
last year, — and the soft mildness of this May 
night instead of the glacial cold with which T 

19 



290 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

used to shiver as soon as the sun began to go 
down. 

In the foreground, at the entrance to the Marble 
Bridge, the great Arc de Triomphe of China, re- 
splendent with gilding, shines out against the 
evening sky, its values all emphasized by a profu- 
sion of lights. Then the bridge across the lake is 
much lighted, although it seems luminous itself 
in its eternal whiteness. In the distance the whole 
phantasmagoria — empty palaces and pagodas — 
emerges from the obscurity of the trees, and is re- 
flected in the water in lines of fire. 

Our five hundred guests are scattered about in 
sympathetic groups on the borders of the lake be- 
neath the spring-like verdure of the willows, along 
the Marble Bridge or in the imperial gondolas. 
As they come down from the terrace they are given 
gaily decorated lanterns on little sticks, so that 
after a time these balls of color, scattered along 
the paths, seem from a distance like a company of 
glow-worms. 

From where I stand women in light evening 
wraps may be seen on the arms, of officers, cross- 
ing the white paving-stones of the bridge, or 
seated in the stern of the long imperial barques, 
softly propelled by the oarsmen. How strange it 
seems to see these Europeans, almost all of whom 
underwent the tortures of the siege, walking quietly 



THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 291 

about in dinner dress in the retreat of the sover- 
eigns who had secretly conspired to kill them ! 

Decidedly the place has lost all its horrors; 
there is so much light, so many people, so many 
soldiers, that all the vague forms of ghosts and 
evil spirits have been driven away for the night. 

Something like approaching thunder is heard in 
the distance, which proves to be the noise of about 
fifty tambourines announcing the arrival of the 
procession. It was to form at the Yellow Gate, 
so as to follow the line of the new avenue, and to 
disband at the foot of the Rotunda Palace. The 
lights of the first division appear at the entrance 
of the Marble Bridge, and begin to cross its mag- 
nificent white archway. Cavalry, infantry, and 
music, all seem to be rolling on in our direction, 
with enough noise from the brasses and the tam- 
bourines to make the sepulchral walls of the Violet 
City tremble, while above the heads of the thou- 
sands of soldiers groups and rows of extrava- 
gantly Chinese colored lanterns are swinging to 
the movement of the horses' hoofs or to the 
rhythm of human shoulders. 

The troops have passed, but the procession is 
not nearly over. A sharp, delirious noise that gets 
on one's nerves follows the marches played by our 
musicians, — the noise of gongs, zithers, cymbals, 
bells. At the same time gigantic green and yellow 



292 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

banners, curiously slashed and of unusual propor- 
tions, begin to appear on the Marble Bridge, borne 
by an advancing company of tall, slender persons, 
with astonishing underpinnings, who are swing- 
ing along like bears. They prove to be my stilt - 
walkers from Y-Tchou and from Lai-Chou-Chien 
from the vicinity of the tombs, who have taken a 
three or four days' journey in order to participate 
in this French fete! 

Behind them a crescendo of gongs, cymbals, 
and other diabolical Chinese instruments, an- 
nounces the arrival of the dragons, — red and 
green beasts twenty metres long. In some way 
or other they are lighted from within, which by 
night gives them an incandescent appearance; 
above the heads of the crowds they twist and un- 
dulate like the sulphurescent serpents in a Budd- 
hist hell. The entire scene reflected in the water 
— the outline of palace and pagoda with their mul- 
tiple roofs — is emphasized by lines of red lights 
that shine brightly this moonless and cloudy night. 

When the big serpents have gone past, the 
Marble Bridge continues to pour at our feet a 
stream of humanity, although an irregular one, 
which moves tumultuously along with a formi- 
dable noise. It is the rest of our troops, the free 
soldiers following the procession with lanterns, 
also singing the " Marseillaise," or the " Sambre- 



THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 293 

et-Meuse," at the top of their lungs. Along with 
them are German soldiers arm-in-arm with them, 
increasing the volume of sound by adding their 
voices to the others, and singing with all their 
might the old French songs. 

Midnight. The myriads of little red lanterns 
on the cornices of the old palace and pagodas have 
burned themselves out. Obscurity and the usual 
silence have come back to the lake and to the im- 
perial woods. The Chinese princes have discreetly 
withdrawn, followed by their silk-robed attend- 
ants, and have been borne far away in their palan- 
quins to their own dwellings in another part of the 
shadowy city. 

It is now time for the cotillon, after a ball that 
was necessarily short, — a ball that seemed an 
impossibility, for there were scarcely a dozen danc- 
ing women, even including a pretty little twelve- 
year-old girl and her governess, to five hundred 
dancing men. It took place in the beautiful gilt 
pagoda, converted for the night into a ball-room; 
the dancers occupied the centre of the great empty 
space beneath the downcast gaze of the big ala- 
baster goddess in the golden robes, who was my 
companion of last summer in the solitude of this 
same palace, together with a certain yellow and 
white cat. Poor goddess! A bed of natural iris 



294 



THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 



has been arranged for the evening at her feet, and 
the injured background of her altar draped in blue 
satin, against the magnificent folds of which her 
figure stands out in ideal whiteness; her golden 
dress, embroidered with sparkling stones, shows 
to great advantage. 

In spite of all effort to light this sanctuary and 
to decorate it with lanterns in the form of flowers 
and birds, it is too freakish a place for a ball- 
room. It is impossible to light up the corners and 
the gilded arches of the ceiling, and the presiding 
goddess is so mysteriously pale as to be embar- 
rassing with that smile of hers, which seems to 
pity the puerility of our Occidental hopping and 
skipping; her eyes are downcast, that she may 
not see. This feeling of embarrassment is not 
peculiar to myself, for the young woman who is 
leading the cotillon, seized by some sudden fancy, 
leaves the room, taking with her the tambourine 
she is using in the figure that has just begun, and 
is followed by both dancers and onlookers, so that 
the temple is emptied, and our poor little cotillon, 
languidly continued for a time in the open air, 
comes to an end under the cedars of the esplanade, 
where a few lanterns are still burning. 

One o'clock in the morning. Most of the guests 
have departed, having far to go in the darkness 



THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 295 

before reaching their dwelHngs. A few of the 
particularly faithful among the " Allies " remain, 
it is true, around the buffet where the champagne 
continues to flow, and the toasts to France grow 
warmer and warmer. 

I was about to go off alone to my own palace, 
not far away, and was, in fact, already on the in- 
clined plane leading to the Lake of the Lotus, when 
some one called out: " Wait for me; it will rest 
me to go along with you." 

It was Colonel Marchand, and we walked along 
together over the Marble Bridge. The great wind- 
ing sheet of silence and of night has fallen upon 
the Imperial City that had been filled for a single 
evening with music and light. 

*' Well," he questioned, ''how did it go? what 
was your impression of it all ? " And I replied 
as I felt, — that it was magnificently unusual, in 
a setting absolutely unparalleled. 

Yet my friend Marchand seems rather de- 
pressed, and we scarcely speak, except for the 
occasional word that suffices between friends. 
There was, for one thing, the feeling of melan- 
choly that comes from the fading away into the 
past of an event — futile though it was — which 
had brought us a few days' distraction from the 
preoccupations of life; and more than all this, 
there was another feeling, common to us both, 



296 THE LAST DAYS OF PEKIN 

which we understood almost without words as 
our heels clicked on the marble pavement in the 
silence that from moment to moment grew more 
solemn. It seemed to us that this evening had 
commemorated in a way the irremediable down- 
fall of Pekin, or rather the downfall of a people. 
Whatever happens now, even though the remark- 
able Asiatic court comes back here, which seems 
improbable, Pekin is over, its prestige gone, its 
mysteries are open to the light of day. 

Yet this Imperial City was one of the last 
refuges on earth of the marvellous and the un- 
known, one of the last bulwarks of a humanity 
so old as to be incomprehensible — nay, almost 
fabulous — to men of our times. 



Glimpses of China 

and Chinese Homes 

By EDWARD S. MORSE 

Formerly Professor of Zoology in the Imperial University, Tokyo, 
author of "Japanese Homes and their Surroundings," etc. 

With more than ffty sketches from the author'' s journal. 

DURING a short visit to China, Professor Morse endeavored to study more 
particularly the domestic ways of the people, and especially to sketch in 
rapid outline their rooms, kitchens, and the homely details of domestic 
life. His description of street scenes, a Manchu drill-room, Chinese mob, street 
magicians, a pottery town, food, clothing, and many other details of Chinese life 




Library, Private House, Shanghai. 

will surely be of interest to the general reader. His four years' residence in Japan, 
resulting in his well-known book, "Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings," 
and the superb quarto Catalogue of Japanese Pottery published by the Museum of 
Fine Arts, Boston, was a thorough training for the journalist's work in Chma. 
While his Chinese experiences were of the briefest nature, his methods of obser^'a- 
tion, coupled with an intimate knowledge of a cognate nation, give an added value 
to the work. The reader will find for the first time hasty pen-and-ink sketches 
of matters about which he has read, and, despite the abounding Uterature on the 
subject, many features shown in a new light. 

l2mo. Decorated Cloth. ^I.BOnet. 



LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY, Publishers, 

254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 



The Town of the Conqueror 

BY ANNA BOWMAN DODD 

Author of " The American Husband in Paris/* 
*' Three Normandy Inns/'^ ** Cathedral Days/' etc, 

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 
t2mo* Decorated Cloth, $2«00* 



©pinionsf on jfalaisfe* 

The book is one to read through with delight, and to return to with re- 
newed delight. — Philadelphia Telegraph. 

The famous but well-nigh forgotten town furnishes Mrs. Dodd with an 
admirable subject. . . . We have the same vivacious and humorous sallies, the 
same sympathy, appreciation, and insight, which so charmed us in " Cathedral 
Days" and '* Three Normandy Inns." — Commercial Ad'vertiser, N. Y. 

The chief charm of Mrs. Dodd's books is that quite unexpectedly, while 
you are reading about some quaint corner of a quaint old Norman village, she 
will lead you off on the trail of a pretty little love story or other romance of 
delightful consequence, and so before you realize it you feel saturated with 
local atmosphere and personally interested in the most trivial affairs of the 
quaint people you meet in her pages. — Rochester Herald. 

Mrs. Dodd has eyes, sentiment, humor, and a facile pen, all of which 
are stimulated by Normandy and things Norman until not one line she writes 
is dull. — Chicago Tribune. 

The illustrations alone are sufficient to make a fascinating volume, and 
they reproduce the present-day quaintness of an ever-quaint country with 
fidelity. Seldom have the attractions of a country fair been more vividly por- 
trayed than in the bright and chatty rehearsal of the doings at the Falaise 
** Eleventh-Century" fair. — Linjing Age^ Boston. 



LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY, Publishers 

254 Washington Street, Boston, Mass* 



3(n anil 0ut ot 

Cf)ree jBtormantig 3^nng 

BY ANNA BOWMAN DODD 

Nem) edition, m)ith numerous full-page plate and other ittustrations. 
t2mo* Cloth, extra* Price, $2M 



t2mo* Paper, <with frontispiece, 50 cents 



#pinton^ an €f)ree l^ormantip ^nn^ 

The reader who lays down this book without wishing there were more of it 
is to be pitied. ... It is rarely that so thoroughly delightful a bit of travel and 
study is discovered. These sketches of Normandy coast scenes, people, and 
inns, are really quite ideally good. The author has done good work before, but 
nothing so good as this. . . . The inns so capitally treated are at Villerville, 
Dives, and Mont St. Michel, and it is hard to say which of them is the most 
fascinating. — JVew York Tribune. 

Charming alike in matter and literary style. She has the eye of an artist 
for the picturesque, and the art of presenting her impressions in pure and grace- 
ful English. Nothing could be more charming than the description of Villerville 
in the opening chapters. It literally " breathes of the sea " and of the fisher-folk 
who have their homes within the quaint old village. — Sail Francisco Call. 

No one, we fancy, will be able to close this enticing volume without a desire 
to cross the sea and follow in the footsteps of its author, from Villerville to 
Dives, from Dives to Caen, thence to Coutance, and finally to the summit of the 
cathedral-crowned Mont St. Michel. . . . She has the art of making pictures 
for her readers which pulsate with real atmosphere and glow with veritable 
color. There is quick apprehension, close observation, a keen sense of the 
comical — and there is also, here and there, a delicate touch of feeling.— 
Literary World. 



LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY, Publishers 

254 Washington Street, Boston, Mass. 



Catf)et»ml Bayg 

A Tour in Southern England 

BY ANNA BOWMAN DODD 

Ne<w edition* Illustrated Tvith Sketches and 
Photographs by E. ELDON DEANE. tlmo 
Cloth, extra* Price, $i,50 



(©pinion^ on Catl^etiiral SDap^ 

A real addition to the brief list of books that give zest to a tourist. . . . Mrs. 
Dodd's recital of her carriage tour through the lanes and by-paths of Southern 
England is in fact unique. It has nothing in common with those hackneyed 
way-books which direct us to haunts whose beauty they do not in the least cap- 
ture and convey. . . . They hire a T-cart ; a horse, christened " Ballad," with 
whom they and we are soon on terms of choice acquaintanceship ; and proceed 
with light belongings over an ideal route, stopping at ivied country inns, when 
and where they choose, subject to nothing but the weather and their own will. 
Their tour begins at Arundel in Sussex, and ends at Exeter in Devon, a journey 
of six enchanted weeks, — a blended succession of rural villages, towns, heaths 
(Stonehenge and Bath taken in by the way), manor-house, castles, and beyond 
and over all the sacred and inspiring Cathedrals of Chichester, Winchester, 
Salisbury, Wells, and Exeter. . . . Mrs. Dodd's wholesome and winning English 
style, thoroughly individual, lightened with humor, and marked with rare beauty 
in descriptive passages, is the unflagging attraction of the book. — Edmund C. 
Stedman, in the Book Buyer. 

A very pleasant narrative of travel. — London Spectator. 

How one can imprison so much English sunshine and fragrance, and trans- 
mute it into style, and spread it out on the printed page, as our American 
saunterer in England has done, is one of the secrets of authorship. — The Critic. 



LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY, Publishers 

2S4 Washington Street, Boston, Mass* 



§bomt 3$oofe£f oi ZvnUytl 



GLIMPSES OF CALIFORNIA AND THE MISSIONS. By Helen 
Jackson, author of *' Ramona," etc. Ne^w Edition. With 37 pictures 
by Henry Sandham, inckiding numerous full-page plates. i2mo. Dec- 
orated cloth. $1.50. 

Mrs. Jackson's delightful California articles, hitherto printed with her European travel 
sketches, are now published in a separate volume with the addition of a series of pictures by 
Henry Sandham, who accompanied Mrs. Jackson in the California trip which gave sugges- 
tions for her famous romance, *'Ramona." 

JOURNEYS WITH DUMAS. THE SPERONARA. Translated from 
the French of Alexandre Dumas by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. 
i6mo. Cloth. $1.25. 

In 1834 the great French novelist set forth upon a series of journeys which furnished 
material for some delightful sketches and stories. The great writer's tales and anecdotes 
are as fresh and entertaining as ever, and from this feast Miss Wormeley, the translator of 
Balzac, has gathered a series of volumes, the first of which is now offered. It describes a 
Mediterranean trip, taking the reader through Sicily. 

IN AND AROUND THE GRAND CANYON. The Grand Canyon 
of the Colorado River in Arizona. By George Wharton James. 
With thirty full-page plates and seventy illustrations in the text. 8vo. 
$3.00. 

An illustrated work of which too much can scarcely be said in praise. "The Grand 
Canyon" is one of the world's wonders, and this volume is the most thorough and satis- 
fying presentation of its many rugged attractions thus far offered. — San Francisco Chronicle. 

THE ISLES AND SHRINES OF GREECE. By Samuel J. Barrows. 
With 19 full-page plates. 8vo. $z.oo. 

The volume abounds in interest for the general reader; it contains much information 
of value for students of Greek life, language^ religion, and art ; it is an engaging book on 
an inspiring theme. The illustrations are beautiful reproductions of Greek monuments, 
life, and scenery. — The Christian Register. 

TO ROME ON A TRICYCLE. Two Pilgrims' Progress from Fair 
Florence to the Eternal City of Rome. By Joseph Pennell and 
Elizabeth Robins, authors of "A Canterbury Pilgrimage," etc. With 
pen drawings by Joseph Pennell. Nenv edition. i2mo. $1.50- 

LAZY TOURS IN SPAIN AND ELSEWHERE. By Louise Chand- 
ler MouLTON. i2mo. $1.50. 
The book is one to enchain the reader in his lazy hours, or beguile a journey, with 

its charm and color of foreign scenes. — Lilian fVhiting. 

RANDOM RAMBLES. By Louise Chandler Moulton. i8mo. $l.^s^ 

LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY, Publishers 

254 Washington Street, Boston, Mass. 



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